Interiors and Exteriors

With this idea of looking at the mundane of suburban territory an idea that could be pursued is to produce a book that looks at exteriors and interiors and create images that look as though we are in these places. I would want this piece to be quite eerie and create a false image, an imagined image of places from the outside and inside. The idea would be to make it look like these images go together when really they don’t. This would be done as a way of achieving how people make assumptions through images of where these places are and what would be inside these exteriors.

Here are a few exterior and interior shots together that could work like this.

This idea has been developed from the idea of getting on a train and photographing the destinations in between with the respect that I now know where houses like this are and know that this idea above is possible. These images will also very much portray my portrayal of the world and how things appear to me on a day to day basis, although the images of the exteriors are of places I do not know I want the representation to be portrayed as something I am very familiar with. The idea of peoples homes is something that is very interesting for me, it is always fascination what these places hold and the memory’s and story’s. An image of a house can mean so much to one person and so little to another but as everybody has a home there is still something for everyone to be taken out of every image whether it is personal or something that creates a completely unrelated story for the viewer.

I have recently been editing my images into sections that they fit into separate sections, as I photograph all the time I fell this is the best thing to do as I can make my images more manageable and look at the larger scale of what my images are actually achieving.

September 11 – Alejandro Gonzalez

This video above is a Mexican named Alejandro Gonzalez take in documentary form of the September 11th disaster. When watching this I thought of another way in which I could approach my football piece. The piece deals with sound alone while cutting into shots of various iconic things that people remember clearly from the event like the falling man and the actual planes crashing into the building. The video very much focuses on symbolizing the event through the well know images and collective memory’s something which I could look at in my football sound piece. In this piece I very much listened hard to and linked this in with the notion that I had at the time creating narrative in my mind. This is relevant to my idea as I hope to make people feel as though they could be at the place they are and though sound should be able to fill in the gaps.

How will this effect my piece?

After watching this I have decided to think about putting moving image in with the piece. I could look at iconic things that tie in which every football game that is ever played. Ideas for this is to have close ups of the feet when they are doing there boots up for example, the shin pads being put on and socks going up. Another thing could be to have close up on some of the people that are going to be playing the game. While this is happening there could be sounds of the crowd and the players voices but without actually seeing any of the actual game. The idea with this would be to create a narrative to a game that we are not sure what level of football is being played, this could be show at the end of the game with a long shot of the pitch at the end of a game. This would create the feeling of how people can have the best moment of their lives on a park pitch and that these places are made into arenas for some of the biggest moments of people lives. A reason for doing this is to show to people how football can mean so much even if it is a park but I want to present it in a way that it could be a game played at a huge stadium anywhere in the world, I believe this will reach the audience in a way that will present how important a game may be to one person and not appear so important for somebody else but how equal importance can be portrayed in a non direct way.

Other Influences – Suburbia

Some other work me and Ross have also looked at includes:

Bill Owens – Suburbia

“Suburbia” is a behind the scenes look at the American dream, documenting the life and times of the suburban dweller. The photographs were shot in Livermore California’s Amador Valley in 1972. For anyone who lived in the suburbs during the 70’s, the pictures from “Suburbia” are like looking in a mirror.”

http://www.artagogo.com/interview/owensinterview/owensinterview.htm (12/01/09)

http://www.e-flux.com/show_images/1201803100image_web.jpg (12/01/09)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/92401003_1ca352e22a.jpg (12/01/09)

Bill Owens work in Suburbia differs to what me and Ross aim to do as he very much looks at people and who lives in these areas where as we aim to ask people to guess using there own knowledge of these sort of places to the humans that inhabit these places. I feel Bill Owens approach is very personal to the people who live in these suburban areas and you get a feeling when looking through the images of a story that he found out having talking to his subjects and photographing them on regular basis. The book draws you into the lifestyle of the normal civilian and how it can be hard to live and how community’s in suburbia lands in a way are so similar.

Richard Billingham – Black Country

http://www.schaden.com/covers/036/03633.jpg (12/01/09)

The book Black County by Richard Billingham plays as an important influence of the type of things that we will be photographing. Billingham focuses on urban areas that are in the black country, in the book we she shots of houses, roads and various other subjects that reveal a take on our surroundings and the spaces that are in the black country. Unlike Billingham me and Ross did not grow up in these surroundings however I feel this is more of a good thing than bad because it means we will approach things in a different way to a local. This will help when making it appeal to people as it will represent notions that maybe people might not have thought of.

Mark Power – 26 Different Endings

http://www.photobookguide.com/images/power_26/power-26-3.jpg (12/01/09)

Mark Power’s 26 Different Endings explores the edge of London and the parts that fall of the map and in the a-z are not a part of London. This book is interesting to me as it creates a similar feeling to what we are exploring. I enjoy the idea of these places being deemed irrelevant in terms of a map, the notion that one place should be included and one shouldn’t. This provides influcene as an approach we could take with our piece is to be showing the places that people pass daily as destinations in there own right and not just places to pick up people in order to take them to the city of Coventry or Birmingham.

Adding to Idea

Lindley Hall Farm, owned by the Farmers. OR Meriden
CENTER OF ENGLAND – Look at where the center of England is, people say its different places.
grid reference SP 36373.66 96143.05.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2271925.stm (08/01/09)

Grid Reference’s – places of interest with common grid references – could approach like this with grid reference next to the image.

Find out about ley lines on any of the destinations. Churches or paths of some historical interest. Do some research into what may have happened historically in regards to these destinations and what has maybe changed over the period of time.

Dan Holdsworth

With Dan Holdsworth work I like the approach he takes to the natural and the unnatural, I like how colour’s that we cant actually see come out of his images and the idea of how the environment is so unexplored. In the northern light work we see spaces that appear, we are in a way seeing something that doesn’t exist to the human eye and this is something that I find beautiful. This is something I think my previous images in a way do explore however I want to look into this in a bigger way.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SE6EW086L._SL500_AA240_.jpg (11/01/09)

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/imgs/artists/holdsworth_dan/dan_holdsworth_1.jpg (11/01/09)

“Interested in spaces like those between motorways, the vegetation there and the way in which places have evolved by local interventions and through a kind of ecological time” Dan Holdsworth

With this we want to look at the destinations in between Coventry and Birmingham that are accessible by train. This creates an interest with the following areas, Surburbia, Natural landscape, characteristics of towns, slow changes, growth etc.

The idea I enjoy the most is the man made with this countryside scene and the idea that wherever you go there is always human intervention therefore making the natural impossible to actually truly exist. Even skylines are polluted with buildings, electricity lines and various other things.

Shoot – Coventry to Birmingham

Me and my friend Ross Rawlings went on an exploration of our local surroundings accessible by trains from Coventry to Birmingham. Here are a few examples of the images we produced on a couple of shoots over the last few days.

While on the journey we talked of a possible piece that could be made out of this idea of the train line from Coventry to Birmingham and thought of artists we had already come across that we had been influenced consciously or not from this trip. Two that firmly stand out are Todd Hido and Dan Holdsworth.