Study Task 4

Proto-Question - How does photography and drawing differ in regard to visual journalism and reportage work?

I have found out that there is a difference between the two processes of image making, which highly influences the resulting outcomes and how they are then read by an audience. They both have unique characteristics in the way they are produced, altering the possibilities and limitations of each. For example, with photography there is the decisive moment, which is often a fraction of a second where the image is captured by the camera, whereas with drawing there is not one moment that the image is captured in as drawing takes longer than pressing a shutter. This moment therefore is waited on by both photographer and artist, but the photograph is an instantaneous and immediate reaction, and the drawing is a slow one. Drawing is also more of an interpretation of the moment, influenced greatly by the hand of the maker, where the photograph is often more believed to be a true to life depiction, with less choices and influencing factors involved. Yet they are still both processes of choice, so each is entirely dependent on the creator of the image. There is then also a question of the truth of the image when they are created by a subjective human being, which could differ between the two processes again. The moments either side of the captured moment are not always clear or present in the resulting image, which effects whether it holds up as true or not. And the image itself could distort or mask the truth of the situation the moment was a part of, representing it in a false way. 

‘To leave a drawing in the state of its immediate production was, for me, an honest record – not of what I had seen but of what I had done in response to what I had seen’ - W. John Hewitt, ‘The Scribbler’, Varoom

‘What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially’ - Roland Barthes, ‘Camera Lucida’ 

Example - presidential candidate Bob Dole fell on a campaign, the resulting photo showing him on the floor grimacing, giving an impression of him to be weak and unstable. However it doesn't capture the immediate moment after, where he gets right back up and laughs off his tumble. Where a drawing could have been different is that the time it took to draw him on the floor, he would have had time to start getting back up, so perhaps the drawing would then not just capture that one misleading moment. 

This image also breaks the dispassionate observer theory that photographers are just passive onlookers; one of the photographers can be seen saving Dole's head from hitting the ground, instead of getting a potentially front cover shot. 

Study Task 3b - Overview

• Drawing and photography are linked, but also vastly different processes in telling stories and documenting situations. Each has its own benefits and difficulties.
• There is an ethical responsibility and conflict with both photographers and illustrators when creating work about difficult and corrupt events. (dispassionate observer)
• Susan Sontag - Regarding the Pain of Others (context to images, empathy, history, backstory to images)

-Practical - Today's Nuclear Unrest, documented and explored through photography, drawing and writing, to portray reportage work in its differences between the creative approaches. 

Study Task 3 - Images and Theory

HUMAN BEING OR DISPASSIONATE OBSERVER?

Questions role of photojournalists and whether they care more about their photographs than the subjects depicted in them. Challenges the ethics of taking photographs of situations that the photographer themselves could have gotten involved in and potentially helped.

This photograph of Presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996 is an example of this questioning; one photographer can be seen saving Dole's head from hitting the ground missing a potential front page photo opportunity, while the others get the shot without regard for Dole's wellbeing. There was also then an argument by some news analysts at the time about whether a photo of Dole in such a compromising position is fair to take and then to publish for sales, concluding that it wasn't. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=z3JqJFO5qMUC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=the+dispassionate+observer+photography&source=bl&ots=F78E8GIPmQ&sig=1hnpgKE9k7dr0PYuY7jZThyR_Yw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipwJepva3XAhVGthoKHZIPDFAQ6AEIOjAD#v=onepage&q&f=false

There was greater controversy in 1993 with a photo of the Sudanese famine, depicting a starving child being stalked by a vulture. Kevin Carter, the photojournalist who captured this horrifying moment, received negative responses regarding this photo, calling him inhumane for not helping the child, despite him not being able to for his armed escort of soldiers. Carter was very tormented by his experiences which contributed to him taking his own life a year after this picture was taken, yet without it the sheer extent of the suffering of the famine would not have been made known. 

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/kevin-carter

In this case perhaps drawing would not offer a better alternative to taking a photograph. The fleeting moments of both of these scenarios may not have been possible to capture in the drawn image. Even as reportage illustrator George Butler argues that 'drawing is a handshake' ideal for gaining subject's trust when creating work about them, the pure practicalities of drawing vs photography means that photographing the above events was the best means of telling the story. 

Study Task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts

The text I chose was an article on Varoom website called 'Scribbler' by illustrator John Hewitt. In it he discusses his experiences touring with the band The Pogues in the 80's alongside a photographer, capturing what he saw and experienced in a little sketchbook.

He explores the similarities and differences between drawing and photography as creative processes and how they both are able to capture a situation and tell a story. This idea is something which I want to explore in my project, how photography is different from drawing in how they are created and also how they are then read by an audience. 

My poster explores the process of drawing from life, the fast and interpreted marks that are made in order to capture what is seen in a short space of time; this is given context by a quote from the article, which sums up a big part of that process. 

Study Task 1

There are intrinsic links between me, my practice, my interests and the work I want to make in exploring certain subject matters. Story telling is something I am interested in consuming as we as producing, linking with reportage work, print making and publishing. These are avenues I wish to explore not only in COP but within my practice as a whole. A lot of what I am interested in commonly revolves back to stories, and the human experience in life and how that is told to an audience. Empathy is involved in this process and something which is inherent in my character. 

From this, I know that my COP project is going to be linked with reportage and founded in story telling, wether this is directly telling people's experiences or exploring an issue that effects people's lives. 

End of Module Evaluation

Studio Brief 1

Visual Journal - Silhouette Collage

These silhouette collages have proven really really effective in my opinion. Playing around with some of the left over cut outs from previous experiments, I layered them over existing adverts that I have been working from to creates these body shaped 'windows' looking into the adverts  imagery.

I like the fact that it represents how the adverts are viewed by the audience; through the eyes of attraction and through the female form, existing as the most important aspect of the images.

Again by using several forms and imagery in one image makes for an interesting duality; the audience sometimes only focusses on the background image however on another look they then pick out the form that frames the image, changing depending on what they focus on.

I love the subtly of the forms as a result, and how clean and crisp their outlines are against the dark tones of the adverts.

COP 2 - Proposal

After looking over my work and journey throughout COP 1, I have been thinking over what I want to study next year in context of practice and how it links effectively to what I have been working on up to this point. I feel like I have now reached somewhat of a plan for my proposal.

I want to explore self publishing and zines. This is a subject I have been interested in for a long time and have done writing on in the past, and really want to invest more time and energy in. More specifically guerrilla art and political work; self publishing work that aims to make change and impact politically, socially and culturally. I want to discover and create work that shakes up our society and insights really change in people minds and actions for the betterment of everyone.

This will also tap into the DIY movement and attitude, giving me the opportunity to research into other forms of art and culture that employ similar sensibilities, from skateboarding to music to underground political groups.

There is a strong link between this topic and the one I have been exploring in cop 1. Firstly, self-publishing goes against the traditional publishing methods, such as using big companies and aiming for profit, just like the adverts I have been making which have subverted the profit driven ethics of advertising. Secondly, it explores the uses of illustration and graphic art, aiming to use them for positive and meaningful causes, which is the premise I have been working on all the way through this module. This is the main thing that the likes of Zeegen and Garland were talking about in their articles and manifestos, and I am really keen to continue making work that reflects this view and intention for the discipline. My overarching theme of politics directly relates to my subject also, and will allow me to explore this with more focus and consciousness than I have in cop 1.

Visual Journal - Collage and Drawing

Continued collage experiments, this time incorporating line drawings with cut up photos of the adverts.

Again, these aim to, and somewhat succeed at, portraying the objectifying nature of the adverts. Although the women's identities are included this time, they are still reduced down simply to their female forms.

Just as the photos worked well with textures, they also work beautifully with simple hand drawn lines. In this particular pieces the relationship between the collage and the lines is very interesting, theres a duality present, one between the human hand and the perfected photo, creating a disjointed elements where they do not perfectly align.

The bottom right image was the first in the series and is a little different than the others, I believe less successful. The line drawings are more accurate and true to the photo, meaning the overall image looses that disjointed aspect which i feel is important for the concept behind the project. Also the textures are unnecessary and make the image too busy and crowded. One of the main successes of the other 3 are their simplicity and the contrast between the cut out shapes and the empty line drawings, as well as the scruffy/messiness of said drawings.

Visual Journal - More Collage Texture Experiments, Mixed Media

I am very happy with how these ones turned out! I feel like they are more successful than the textured ladies at conveying the message and purpose of this project and visual journal.

The woman have become even more objectified, the idea of their bodies and form being their only function within the adverts. By removing their faces and identity their personalities and humanity is immediately overlooked; by replacing certain body parts with just textures emphasises the form and shape of the women being the most important feature of them, the actual flesh and substance behind their bodies irrelevant.

Visually there is also something very appealing about the mixed media element of these collages, the combination of photos and handmade textures. I guess it starts a juxtaposition regarding the clean, perfect and unrealistic images of the women and the inherently imperfect and very human marks creating the textures.

Study Task 8 - Evaluation of Synthesis, Reflections on COP 1

In order to start planning for my COP 2 proposal, it would be valuable to reflect on my visual journal work and the journey I undertook through COP 1. I need to evaluate what I have done, what I have achieved, what has been explored and how well it has been explored.

Topics Researched -

• Zeegan Quote - questions illustrations motives and functions, holds discipline accountable for it's voice and comment and substance, expresses discontent with a select trend of work today focussing on aesthetics over meaning. 
• First Things First - discontent with graphic art's sole function as advertising tactic, deems commercial means as worthless, useless and a waste, argues other more important themes and issues the disciplines should focus their energies on, challenging and contesting consumerism.
• Street Art (textures) - Creative visual work in public space other than advertising, opposes financial powers over public space, textures represent humanity and meaning. 
• Sign Painting - Advertising/Commercial but human, laborious and hand-made, contrasting advertising's throw away nature and style, craft driven but traditional and meaningful.  
• Immoralities in Advertising - Male Gaze in perfume adverts, power of advertising on subconscious level, adverts creating a norm and expectations within society.

My Responses - 

• Textures - Time-consuming process opposing throw away nature of adverts, visually aesthetic outcomes with meaning, inspired by street artists researched (Blaqk, Siekon etc).
• Typography - Employing more labour intensive processes to convey meaning, taking slogans and perfume names out of context highlighting their absurdity and negativity, nod to sign painting and more traditional advertising techniques combined with modern advertising.
• Fake Adverts - Creating similar influx of slogans and imperatives adverts use but to sell nothing, creating visual noise but also aesthetically pleasing work to bring to light the bombardment of actual advertising on our daily lives.
• Line Drawings - Taking perfume advertising's imagery out of context to highlight it's nature, creating slightly dystopian feeling to images, taking out identity and facial expressions/features to highlight objectifying, breaking down adverts to their separate elements and portraying them in their bare bones.
• Textured Ladies - Combines labour intensive processes and out of context explorations, creates energetic and interesting images based on glamorous and polished adverts, puts humanity back into adverts and makes them almost more elegant, further attempting to break apart adverts and the images they portray.
• Textured Photos - More directly using adverts, combining elements into one, taking out identity for objectification, more dystopian as uses actual adverts but subverted. 

Reviewing the work i have done, I am slightly struggling to weave the links and relevance of the separate explorations into one coherent and effective theme and thread for the hole project. To me at least, it all seems a bit disjointed and unconscious, each stage and exploration almost separate from the last, even if there is some relevance there. I don't think this is  abad thing, as it shows I have been considering several things and once and have been trying to explore different avenues, but I feel like while I was doing this I should have been more conscious of its relevance and relationship with the previous work and theme that I was trying to explore. This is something I can do more of in COP 2 though; it is a lesson learnt in project management. Always refer back to the theme and purpose of the project and reflect on whether the work is actually succeeding to live up to this or push it or explore it further. 

Theory - Mulvey's Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory directly links and applies to the perfume adverts I have been working with, as well as the majority of media we consume on a daily basis, from cinema to TV and as mentioned, adverts.

Mulvey argues that women are used and included in images, whether moving or still, for the sole purpose of being looked at and therefore desired by male viewers. They are thus controlled by the gaze, fulfilling gazer's voyueristic, sexual needs. The women become objects, their personalities and humility cast as irrelevant, the viewers subjects who dominate over the objects as a result.

In the adverts this idea is explicitly apparent. The women depicted are nothing more than sources of pleasure and objects of desire, to be looked at and lusted over and nothing more. Even though the products are for women, and the adverts exist to persuade a female audience to buy them, the pictures are still there to appeal to the male gaze. Scopophilia is the sexual pleasure from looking, voyeurism, and also acknowledges the pleasure of being looked at; the female audience is supposed to desire to become the women depicted in the adverts, so that they as a result become the objects of said male gaze.

Many have argued that we are so conditioned as a society and so frequently and constantly exposed to the male gaze concept that we rarely if ever notice it's existence or really consider it's implications. Often times we won't think twice about a sexy female form being shown on screen or on a billboard or in a magazine, we won't see it as anything out of the ordinary or inherently negative. I hope that by taking the images out of context, working into them with textures and rehashing them into other mediums and forms of visual imagery, an audience will be more aware of the male gaze and the nature of the images we so commonly consume. Even if my work isn't necessarily commenting directly on the concept or the imagery I am working with, I hope that it at least brings the images into the light out of the dark of familiarity and cultural and social conditioning.

Visual Journal - Textured Ladies

Combining my previous experiments with texture and line/shape, specifically in response to perfume adverts, I have found a slightly new aesthetic direction for my work.

I absolutely love these textured lady images, based off existing adverts, but subverting them into anonymous, slightly animated versions of the models depicted. I am aiming to keep a degree of elegance with these images, still taking them out of context but by using textures they almost become pieces of art rather than the raunchy and sexualised images they start as. For some reason they take on a different quality, one that is perhaps less objectifying and more respectful and appreciative...whether this is true or not I am unsure.

Again it is still about deconstructing the images we are force fed on a daily basis via advertising, seeing how their messages and interpretations change and alter with the context and the medium used to create them. 

Visual Journal - Failed Texture Experiments

Based off some of my artist research of textures, such as the work of Zes MSK, I wanted to try and explore textures within images of advertising and the people in them. So I headed into the city to collect photos of advertising to respond to.

Just as I was with my original line experiments, I wanted to try and incorporate overly happy and idealistic images that adverts often use, but that are quite dystopian and easily uneasy with how over the top and unrealistic they are. By using layering and gestural image making techniques I wanted to heighten this sense of eeriness. 

The outcome, although certainly dystopian, was horrific. I don't really know what went wrong with my drawing abilities this day, and trying to save it with more marks and layers evidently didn't work wonders. In this instance it is not the idea that was unsuccessful but the execution and image making, which is easily rectified by exploring other ways to present my ideas using layering and textures.

Visual Journal - Perfume Posters

Leading on from the ad slogan posters I made previously, I combined the perfume drawings and typography together to make some more posters.

Pairing the two really communicates the absurdity of the perfume names and the photos they usually exist next to. They are taken out of context when coupled with a drawing, but also the abstract and ambiguous nature of the drawing creates a strange almost dystopian feel to the images; faceless women with minimal features and just anatomical outlines.

Visual Journey - Posters

From my earlier textural and typographic work, I coupled them together to make posters; fake advertising selling nothing. There is an interesting discussion that exists regarding advertising being simply aesthetic instead of commercially functional. I was simply making posters that looked nice and commented on advertising yet served no further purpose as images.

Putting them up was a way of taking this idea and actually applying it, pushing it outside of the confines of the studio, something that I need to push more in my uni work. I don't know whether it particularly worked in this instance, due to the execution and process I used to actually stick them up. They are very DIY, 2 A4 sheets taped together which were then haphazardly taped up. It does show an interesting juxtaposition when compared to the polished, slick billboards we see daily and stands true to the DIY ethics, but in this case they may have been more effective had they exactly emulated real adverts. They also might have lasted longer...

Visual Journal - Study Task 7, Rationale

The theme I am currently exploring is advertising, considering it's purpose, values, ethics and functions within out society. I started with wanting to explore the issue of public space in relation to advertising, but as of yet haven't come across a suitable and effective way to push my work in such a direction. As a result I have been more focussing on deconstructing advertising into it's separate visual elements, playing around with taking them out of context in which they were created for. In this I am hoping to highlight what the images we see on a day to day basis actually represent beyond the product and company they are intended to advertise.

I am currently just using simple drawing techniques to visually represent my ideas, namely posca markers on paper. This is proving effective in the creation of initial images taken from advertising, even if it is very basic and predictable as a medium. I do wish to further explore texture as I was doing at the start, and combine mixed media within the drawings of deconstructed perfume adverts. I think by layering up and working into these images it could create an interesting contrast to their polished, airbrushed beginnings. Collage is also something which could find its way into my exploration, but in what way I am yet to decide.

I am inspired by the loose textural and mark-marking works of graffiti artists Revok, Zes, Seikon and Blqk. All use line, shape, tone and texture in interesting ways, creating engaging and tactile yet loose textural images. This is a way that public space comes into the work, playing on the idea or authorship over public space and the concept of paying to present visual work within it. Although their work does not tackle the same issues as mine does, I think trying to learn from their approaches and adopting some of their techniques could provide some great outcomes when paired with my theme and idea.

Visual Journal - Failed Idea, Dead End

This image was an attempt at exploring an idea, but one that was wildly unsuccessful and a dead end in regards to my visual journey through this project.

My thinking was to try and represent advertising's power and impact over public space. I wanted to try and visually present their bombardment, showing how they 'take over' more than just the physical billboards and walls they inhabit.

I went into Leeds city centre and found all of the Street Posts that I could, and standing there for a few minutes I tallied how many people walked past them, close enough to notice the adverts and so be influenced by them. By no means was this a scientific experiment which I had some contention with; I think that if I am going to explore this idea then the data needs to be accurate and that is important. Then from photos I took of the advertising and a map that I picked up from tourist information I tried to visualise this experiment and depict my findings, by taking as many shapes and outlines from the photos as people I tallied to show the concentration and scale of influence these images were having.

Needless to say it didn't work as well as I had hoped, and there were a lot of loose ends with it as an idea, such as the incorrectness of the data and the randomness of my visualising methods. However I think that the idea is interesting and there could be some value there. I think I will still just put it down to a failed experiment and carry on exploring other methods of image making and idea exploring with this journal.

Visual Journal - Shape/Line

Today I started exploring the shape element, but as each element can be vague and the boundaries blurry, they could fall into line also.

The initial idea was to look at adverts and pick out shapes that the compositions used made, looking at not only the forms of the products and actors depicted, but also the negative space around them, to create abstract and fairly random assortment of shapes from these.

When searching for different advertising, I stumbled on perfume adverts and for whatever reason they caught my eye so i started responding to them. Because they basically always use actors and female forms, my responses ended up becoming quite interesting, abstract anatomical outlines and shapes. There is the obvious controversy surrounding such adverts for being objectifying, which added an extra layer of intrigue within the work and the comment I was making. 

I really love the way they turned out, that they can be abstract yet you can still pick out the forms of the women and they are distinguishable at the same time. I think the least effective one would be the top right as it's just too obvious as to what it is, I think i may redraw it but vaguer and more abstract.

Whilst drawing these and studying the adverts, I noticed the type of names the perfumes were called, things such as 'reveal' and 'addict', and thought they were odd names. They don't really have positive connotations, yet they sell the product and people buy them, and genuinely I wonder why people don't see them as strange names.

I thought it would be an interesting idea to take these words out of context, to redraw them in the same typefaces used in the adverts, but taken away from the adverts, the elegant and often quite fancy type really juxtaposes the actual words they are spelling out. I want to put these on posters with the previous drawings. I think the combination of the words and their contrasting typefaces along with the line drawings of mysterious and anonymous yet elegant and sexual women will create some really interesting and thought provoking results.

Study Task 6 - Peer Review Focus

Here is the peer review form....slightly sparse lets say.

At this point I have an idea of the vague direction my project may be heading in, and I have focussed down on advertising within the creative arts as a topic to explore and deconstruct further. I have really enjoyed the textural responses and experiments and really want to continue with these.

There are a lot more possibilities within the other formal elements too to explore, and I think line/shape is going to be my next direction, trying to push my image making and idea exploration further. I am hoping this will then lead into, inform and incorporate the textures somewhere later too.

I think it will also be really crucial to do some more research around my concept. More artist research will inspire my outcomes but also some more contextual, theoretical research to inform my ideas and the intentions I am formulating throughout my journal.