The Apology Line

“The Apology Line” is a short film by James Lee that I was introduced to about a year ago. When thinking about shots that I was going to take around the city I too a lot of influence from this as Lee looks at a city and places like tower blocks which I also intend to explore. The visuals are something I very much enjoy in this piece and I feel an interaction with this city even though it is not clear where it is shot but the norm that these places are everywhere is expressed. This notion is something I want to portray in my short film on memory as I want people to feel a connection to what they see even though the viewer may not have been to Coventry. When looking at the visual style of this piece this is something I very much want to do in my piece with all the shots being very static and only having movement in the film at some very rare occasions in order to keep it structured and moving along very nicely for the audience. A further reason for wanting to keep the camera still is because I am stepping out of my comfort zone with moving image but this is a way I can still use my photographic skills in producing my work.

Idea Change

As I have said before I want to explore spaces where memory’s exist around the house however I have decided to change this and look at spaces around Coventry. I have chosen to do this so I look at spaces that are not directly linked to just me and the people I know. The idea is to represent the notion of memory being everywhere weather it is personal, in relation to the city, history, buildings or other people. With this idea I want people to watch and the think of the way in which they make sense of what they see, how does this question their own personal memory’s, sites they are used to but may have never seen before because of the way a memory is shaped. I also want to include shots of the sky and the passing of time and space, this can show how nothing can ever really be captured to portray the way we see things happen but to relocate this memory to exact time and make it happen again is completely impossible.

I watched the film “Memento” last night and I feel this has helped me change my mind but not in a direct way as this film is not similar to what I want to explore. Memento very much looks at how life would be so hard to live without a memory, we get portrayed a way of living through notes and images. This idea brings up the issue that memory can’t exist in notes and images. Even though he wants to act upon these things he sees the idea of the character having a memory is still not present in the film and therefore the audience can question if there is any point in him living “just because there are things i don’t remember doesn’t make my actions meaningless” Memento (18:00-18:30). I just like the general idea of the film and how without memory nothing makes sense. This relates back to my idea slightly as everything we see in life makes sense and there has to be a reason why, this is because of memory.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Article of Henri Cartier-Bresson – http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/bresson.htm (20/11/08)

Henri Cartier-Bresson has always been an inspiration to me and I love how he attempts to capture life and every aspect of life. It states in this article that Bresson:

“prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life, to preserve life in the act of living.”

When reading this I thought of the aim to my piece and how I am almost turning this idea on its head by looking at a place where the act of living is happening however not showing visualy as there wont be people in the shots. I do however still want to show the act of living but in a very different way to how Henri Cartier-Bresson looks at life.

Henri Cartier-Bresson books I looked at:

Jean Clair, 1998, Henri Cartier-Bresson Europeans, London : Hayward Gallery:

This book provides a very interesting look into other countries and cultures in the form of one induviduals eyes. The idea of one person representing their notion of things is something that very much interests me.

Nan Goldin

This is an article on Nan Goldin that I have read recently and I feel it has helped me with my idea for memory and how I could possible tackle this.

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/fineman/fineman12-12-96.asp (20/10/08)

Parts of the interview that I liked particularly are:

"She's an artist obsessed with taking 

control of her own personal history, with 

preserving memory from the ravages of time 

and the inevitable erosion of retrospective 

revision"
                                              

"Her preferred settings 

are the interior spaces in which private 

dramas get played out: cluttered kitchens 

and bathrooms, downtown bars and rumpled 

beds. And her eye is acutely attuned to the 

intricate negotiations between people and

their surroundings"

This idea of “cluttered kitchens and bathrooms” looks at the notion I have towards my video piece I want to produce in the respect that I am looking at empty spaces that contains memory to people. Even though these places will be empty when I film them they will still represent people and this idea of how people understand this links to the idea in this article of “negotiations between people and their surroundings” and how we can understand a place because of what we see in spaces, the notion that surroundings help us become a person and therefore help us form memory’s. Also this representation of “private dramas” will be shown in my work as the state in which we see the rooms along with the voice over can help create a vision of this space and what the audience are seeing.

Very interesting video as I really understand now why Nan took so many photos and how it was a way of controlling her uncontrollable life. I guess with such a heavy amount off drug taking a way of gaining control on what is happening is by making some good out of it. The images are very personal to her and this comes across in the images, this is something I would like to achieve in my images of home life.

Images of Friends

These images below are just some that I have taken around, the images are not all perfectly exposed however this very much comes across in Nan Goldin’s work and was something that I wanted to experiment with. I aimed to take photographs  without worrying to much about exposure in order to create a very raw style. Some of the images are aimed up towards the lights in order to create a contrast in colour’s. The images are personal to me and are just shots of me spending time with my friends at university.

Richard Misrach – Golden Gate

Book: T.J Clark. Richard Walker, 2001, Golden Gate, Arena Editions

Golden Gate

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/Misrach_GG2.jpg (18/11/08)

I have always liked the idea of focusing on one place continuously over a length of time. The idea of having a visual memory of a place and how the setting has changed. This collection of images show the sky at a lot of diferent states and for me it is not the landscape but the forever changing skyline that draws me to these photographs. I like how the bridge is sometimes seen with it often being hidden by fog or mist. When looking through the images in the book you get a memory of each image and how at one point something can appear so different and then change, the site seen the previous day week or year is just a memory of the place at that time, this skyline will never return in exactly the same way. I love the beautiful colors and the fact that no single image is the same as another. This project is personal, they are photographs from Mishrach’s porch, this also adds a nice dimension to the images that he enjoys the basic things in life that he is surrounded by everyday and wants to show this beautiful place to more people.

Quotes taken from the Golden Gate book
“All that is neccessary to Misrach’s purpose is that there is enough sameness in the sequence for the camera to declare itself a clock, a timepiece”
“The truth of the Golden Gate is that it is a cliche, and the reality is that the cliche is beautiful. Photography is the right medium to expose that non contradiction because it is not afraid of repeating itself”

Patrick Keiller – London

This film by Patrick Keiller is one I found very interesting when thinking about how I want to shoot my piece on memory. Keiller uses long shot’s after one another throughout the film with a voice over in the same way I want to piece together my film. The film looks at the year 1992 when London and England became very deflated from the control of Margette Thatcher and how the place looked worn down and portrayed a very unsettled world we lived in. This film may recall memory’s for people who lived these times but for others just a representation of memory for others.

http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/london.html (17/11/08)

The above website states that London “provides a contrast that reflects the unique living chaos of London, and showcases the city in a manner infused with Surreal conviction. That the relatively recent London of 1992 seems so alien and grey to us is a glowing tribute to the changes that have taken place in it since. But as well as being a document of the year, London is also of a documentary of a timeless urban state of mind.”

This interests me as it is a representation of a general memory of its time, the memory does not come from the actual images we see but how these bring up what the times where like and what has happened since. The memory lies in our discourse of London Town as apposed to the images on sreen these just provide content to put it into context. The film I am going to produce will be similar to the quote above “reflects the unique living chaos of London” but in context of my home life. Living with 10 students in a house is very crazy at times and I want the long shots to portray this but when the rooms are empty as apposed to occupied. My reason for this is to depict how you can tell a place that is sometimes so full of life just by the visual of it when it is empty, what has been left behind from humans, what is left in the shot that illustrates this chaos that we cannot see directly.

These types of shot give viewers time to review what they see and really take in every detail which is very important to me because I feel if the real message is going to be put across effectively this needs to be done. In addition to this the piece will portray this collective memory as a house but portray different messages to other people in a similar way to London as everybody will interpret such a huge place like London on a very different level.

Memory Artifact Idea

After thinking in depth how I am going to make my moving image piece to do with memory in the way that looks at memory’s as a collective for everybody while still only looking at my perception I have decided to look at a place I spend a lot of my time at and this is my house at university. My reason for choosing this is to convey how everybody has memory’s in their own houses and that personal space but actual memory’s are only personal to the people who have lived in these spaces. I will do this by having different shots of different rooms with a voice over that begins by talking about what this place means to you and then coming back to what it means to me. The idea is to create a completely contrasting attitude towards the outsiders view looking in and my own personal view while still bringing up the idea of how memory’s are everywhere and how this relates to the outsiders own home. With the influence coming from photographers like Corrine Day and Richard Billingham I hope to create a visual piece that shows my house in a very real way in a similar way to a photograph meaning long still shots of the rooms at different times, I want to create a rawness to the shots that make you feel part of this place and also visual that shows very much to the audience the type of people who could live in this house and what they do in this space. This notion of guessing the memory’s the people who live here could have while still not knowing exactly what they are seeing.

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is another photographer who focuses on home life. This photographer interests me a lot as he photographed with the cheapest equipment and didn’t take any care over his film. Billingham’s work on his family is very personal and shows a very real look into his life. Richard’s Father was an alchoholic and his mother a chain smoker with tattos all over her body.

‘it’s not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise,
be political or whatever, only to make work that is as spiritually
meaningful as I can make it -
in all these photographs I never bothered with things like
the negatives. some of them got marked and scratched.
I just used the cheapest film and took them to be processed
at the cheapest place. I was just trying to make order out of chaos.’

http://www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/billingham.html 14/11/08

I find the above quote “I was just trying to make order out of chaos” very interesting indeed. To me I read it that by taking an image and pausing time is the only way to observe everything going on. Taking this time and pausing it we can make order of the chaos because we are doing something that cannot be done illustrating how impossible it would be to create order in this world Billingham is seeing. I believe Richard Billingham captures these moments in an attempt to hold onto these moments, memorys of his family in a way that is normal in everybody’s lives through photography and to create images that move us. Although his family are very different he does not see this and simply sees his family as the norm, the images to me portray cherished moments not moments that are resented by the artist as another viewer may see them. This ties in nicely with memory as it portrays how differently memory’s can be portrayed, ones person’s idea of a happy memory may to somebody else be the complete opposite. This defines how the word memory can not have any description to any one individual and can only ever be a representation that changes from person to person with their personal experiences. BIllingham did not see his art as out of the ordinary but very much the opposite, he was simply documenting home life as he lived and saw it and even though these memory are only personal to him we get to see another world in a real way.

I love this idea of memory being so different to everybody and this is really how I want my piece to come across when I have defined what I want to do exactly. I want a piece that looks at memory for everyone but narrows down to me and then comes back to asking the audience what a memory really is, whether the word can exist for the collective or if it is simply something that only an individual can understand through their living moments. Even a memory of Manchester United winning the treble in 99 stands for a collective memory as “something that happened” but in terms of everybody and different individuals we cannot explain one persons memory of this moment to another’s and that is something that really interests me.

Richard Billingham, 1996, Ray’s a laugh, Berlin : SCALO

Dead Man’s Shoes

One film i have looked at recently is dead man’s shoes. I looked at the relationship between Richard and his disabled brother Anthony in terms of memory. Richard who comes back from the army tries to live through his dead brothers past hence the title “Dead Man’s Shoes” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419677/. What we see in Richard is a character who tries to adopt his brothers memory but in his body in order to put these people in the wrong in their place. I believe the film very much portrays personal guilt on Richard as he has clearly stood up for Anthony in the past and because of this very memory he feels the needs to make up for something he couldn’t have control over and become a murderer because of what is expected. Richard becomes as bad as the others by the end of the film but this idea of close relations and the protection to his brother we feel for the character and the person he has become which ultimately is a mix of his brothers memory but Richards ability to take action means this memory can be acted upon. The fact Richard gets another character to kill him at the end of the film portrays that the acts (murders) he has carried out were only through the memory of his brother and do not have anything to do with his view on these people on a personally effected level.

What i took out of this – I now want to explore personal memorys and how others effect this. I want to bring this into my idea of places of memory’s to me and the reason why these memory’s exist. An idea of who’s other memory’s these places lie in and why. I want to portray to an audience that memory can lie almost anywhere and that some places could ultimatly be a memory for them if put into the same circumstances. I have begun to think about looking at my university house empty as this is what it was before i moved in and this is what it will be after but the vision of the rooms and what has happened will live with me for my life. Other people will move in and a new memory will begin. Like a photograph the memory of this place can only be seen by the people who have lived through this.

People may question why this would be of interest to anybody else. I believe it is interesting because viewers get the chance to imagine memory’s and people who have occupied these spaces. In all homes there are memory’s but without the actualization all i can do is try to represent a memory.