Dan Holdsworth

I went to a talk by Dan Holdsworth a few weeks ago at the herbert gallery. Holdsworth spoke at first of how he got to where he was talking of his fathers passion and how he adopted some of these from postcards he received. Dan enjoys to walk and this very much comes across in his photographs as he looks at long distance views that are attractive to the eye in a similar way to what you see when walking. This photographer started his work in his home Middlesborough where he looked at the industrial landscape that surrounded him making a clear definition of the city through the form of photography. Holdsworths influences include Paul Shepherd, Lewis Baltz, Robert Smithson and Angreas Gurskey among others and I have looked at this work some more than others in an attempt to understand the connection. The work of Lewis Baltz I found most relevant as he looks into urban aswell as landscape that shows a clear indication of where Dan may have got his influence for his images in Norway and Iceland when looking at the northern lights.

One piece of work I found on Holdsworth site that I found most interesting is named “A machine for living”, This work looks at bluewater shopping centre a place situated near my hometown. As I have mentioned before in this blog I have an interest in the power of consumerism and this image I found below tends to sum this notion.

Bluewater Shopping Centre

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/howweare/images/works/danholdsworth_large.jpg (27/11/08)

For me this image portrays a very consumerist world that we all live in. The image we see shows a village of consumerism, a place that comes alive during the day and is dead at night. I like the idea of photographing this place at night as it comes across as a bubble in the world where great things could happen, the over exposing of the lights makes us see the place as great when really it is an unatural place where consumers go every day in an attempt to feel good. In addition on this idea of photographing this place at night there is an unknown to this area, we may see this place in a busy way although it is empty, we see the many parking spaces and the grand size of the place is portrayed to us which really gives the emphasis of a place of consumerism and nothing else.

Another set of the images I very much liked are the ones Holdsworth took of the northern light simply because they are visually pleasing and nice to look at. The images examine these different colours in the sky in a great way, the sky I find is always interesting to look at because it is forever changing and any one images can never be the same.

In addition to this I enjoyed looking at the megalith and motorway vistas piece, what interest me with these is how places so close to roads that lead to urban environments can also portray the rural elements in life. I like to see the bright lights that are man made in contrast to the natural. This in a way comes back to the idea of power in relation to humans and how we can change natural places with motorways, signs and general form of life. I would like to maybe look into the idea of how it is very hard to get away from human intrusion on places by photographing areas that look only natural but where the idea of human life and human manipulation is still very much present for all to see.

Reflection – power of vanity

I am fairly happy with the results of my “power of vanity” piece however i know i could have lit the subjects better and positioned the subjects in a better way that would have made more sense and added structure to this piece. An example of a portrait photographer who structures his subjects in the same way throughout a series of images is Rineke Dijkstra who i looked at earlier on in this blog. On the plus i feel i have a strong idea that could be developed into something stronger with more images. I wanted to present these people as subjects i see on a day to day basis and i feel this was achieved as all of them appear very comfortable having been photographed and appear in a natural way that supports the clothes being worn.

Bob Dylan – Time Magazine

Very interesting interview with Bob Dylan that explains in a sense the power of the media “if i want to try and find something out im not going to read time magazine… they have to much to lose by printing the truth” this very much portrays the world we live in, everybody goes along with one another because of the contrived world created by the powerful and rich.

Power – The Power of Vanity

In this piece i look at the power of vanity using just a few select people. These people are my friends, the people i live with. I have chosen to look at these people as i know them extremly well and this should come across in the images i have produced. These subjects i have asked to photograph in the clothes they wear around the house and what they wear when on show to the public on a night out.

Vanity is a part of everyday life whether you like it or not, the need to dress up for the general public, people that you dont even know has never been more apparent than in todays society. This is a power built up over the years by the media and by others. By expecting people to present themselves in a respectable way we have tunnel visioned ourselves to “look good” in such a way that a human being can be critisied on what he or she is wearing and therefore foggeting the real important things in life. If a person is to go against the “norm” they are immediately portrayed to the public as strange, out of the ordinary something that society has taught us over the years we do not want to be.

I think by looking at such a close proximity of friends we get to see how this does truely effect the masses. The way in which the subjects appear in the different images is different which on its own represents how people do make an effort when on show to others they do not know in fear of being judged. In addition to this we may see a change in pose for the image creating a different narrative. This being the notion of how the individual feels, is he/ she more confident when wearing something “acceptable” to our society, consumerism tells the subject they are correct making them more confident and powerful in his/ her own personal state.

Cruel And Tender – Photography

This is a book that i have looked at for a long time as i have a copy of it. When researching into this particular book/ exhibition i found these following interviews with some of the artists who are featured.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cruelandtender/interviews.htm 23/10/ 08

Martin Parr a photographer i found very interesting talked about how his photography was linked to consumerism using very bright images that are typical of modern life and how advertisement is used with images that make products appear better. Parr looks at things like consumerism and commercial photography that people see everyday and how this type of photography is in a way proper gander. Martin’s main base to this piece is that you see the everyday in these images however he takes it out of context and into a sarcastic way that mocks the modern world in which we live in. Although the photographer admits to being very much wraped up in this consumerism world he also feels he can critisise this world and how people are. He states the reason for photographing the subjects he does is to put across these feeling, a way of documenting to the world how he feels.

A tea cup

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_118694_234976_martin-parr.jpg (23/10/08)

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cruelandtender/images/parr_commonsense2_lg.jpg 23/10/08

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra is a dutch photographer who looks at transitional moments in peoples lives by taking portraits of different people. A few things Dijkstra has looked at are youngsters on beaches, women who have just give birth and bull fighters as well as many others.

Soldier

http://projects.vanartgallery.bc.ca/publications/75years/exhibitions/images/renders/VAG-2005.10.2.jpg (23/10/08)

This is interesting to me as this is obviously a clear turning/ transitional point in the subjects life as he is growing up into a grown man who will now fend for himself at war. War is seen as an extreemly hard lifestyle yet people are put into the army at a very young age unaware how they will take to the pressure and strains of this life. These portraits i feel show this in a very simply way and gives across the idea of the unknown and the fact that we are unaware what these people have been through, it is only through the media that we have any idea of how brutal war is.

This interview i found online gave me a better understanding of Dijkstra, his work and how he came to be what he is.

http://www.popphoto.com/americanphotofeatures/4602/a-conversation-with-rineke-dijkstra.html

Rineke Dijkstra states “I want to show things you might not see in normal life. I make normal things appear special. I want people to look at life in a new and different way, but it always has to be based on reality. It’s important that you don’t pass judgement, and leave space for interpretation” I enjoy this side of photography as it gives you the chance to take the real and make something more spectacular out of it, something that means more that what a normal person will see in their day to day lives.

This will help me in my idea for power in the respect that I am very much looking at a transitional period however a very quick one that happens whenever somebody is preparing to show themselves to the general public on a night out. By taking these images of Dijkstra I have looked at and Tellers styles I feel confident I can achieve aesthetically pleasing images while still showing this natural state of before and after by using different areas in the house to portray such a message.

Martin Parr – Fashion Book

The collection of images that make up Martin Parr’s fashion book interests me a lot as it is different to most other types of fashion I have seen for example Corinne Day, David Bailey and Richard Avedon to name a few. Parr did his usual type of imagery in the fashion world by using aspects of the real world and the day to day to explain how he perceives fashion “If there is a theme to this magazine, it is the everyday things of life. We go to the office, go shopping in the mall and supermarket”, “some of the shots featured models, some are people who were cast in the street, sometimes you cannot tell the difference” (Martin Parr, fashion book, pg11) . In this respect I think I agree with Parr on this, fashion is all around us and there is no escaping this. I like the idea that fashion can be anything and everything that people you see everyday wear. Although most of the images are staged and used for advertisement purposes I feel the images still show a sense of realism and portray a usual view of things. With this in mind and Jurgen Tellers “go sees” I will use this idea of the normality in my images as I want to look at what my friends wear everyday. If I was to place these people in a studio I feel the idea would be somewhat dismissed as I aim to achieve images that portray real life and real situations that people find themselves in from switching from cloths they wear in the house to cloths they wear when presenting themselves to the public so by making this a natural process of just waiting around for people to be going out or people to be lazing around the house I feel a truer and more realistic representation is given to the audience.

Martin Parr, 2005, Fashion Magazine Paris : Magnum Photos, 11,

Previous work

Last year me and a friend of my course Nick Henley-Smith did some work for a fashion show put on by fashion students at the university. This work i feel ties in slightly with vanity as it portrays how fashion is ever changing and very different, it provides the thought that vanity will exist for the foreseeable future as fashion is everywhere and the need to look fashionable is very clear in todays culture. The clothes are also art, this mixture provides some very interesting portraits as you see how different people embrace the situation, you get the impression of who has done modeling before and who hasn’t. This portrays the power of the photographer and how the subjects react to this situation in a similar way to how Juergen Teller described this feeling earlier.

Vanity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/feb/17/photography.art

Piece by the observer looking at changes in vanity fair, interesting to me as i am thinking of looking at the power of vanity in my first assignment.

My idea is to look at the people i live with and what they wear around the house when they are not on show to the public. The images of these people in these states would be compared to images of the same people just before they go for a night out. My reasons for looking at this would be to explore how people have to live up to the expectation of looking the best they can if they are going to be seen by large amounts of people, but why?

One piece that matches this slightly is a piece by Juergen Teller named “go sees”

Juergen Teller - Go See's

“teller worked for more than a year in his london studio photographing
girls,just as they presented themselves as they knocked on his
door, plain or refined, beautiful or not. girls, who called at teller’s studio
for an informal meeting in the hope of securing the modeling contract
that would lead to fame, fortune and a life of ‘glamour’.”

I like this idea of a snapshot image that simply shows the audience how it is. This is an idea i may bring into my idea for vanity. To photograph people in this way makes it very real and not staged therefore representing very much the truth.

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/teller.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateshots/episode.jsp?item=15737 – This interview with Teller explains that he got everybody who wanted to see him to just come to see him and send all the models to Juergen. This photographer also explains how he feels he has a sense of male power and also a photographers power over these subjects. Teller explains how he could see the women changing footwear for example around the corner, this shows the idea of vanity and how people have to sell themseleves and this for me is an extremely interesting point.

Power of consumerism

When consumerism comes to mind in conversation it is impossible to leave the notion of power out of the conversation. The power of an institution/state/ government controlling masses of people through the media is impossible to ignore. An idea that humans need to keep up with the latest things the media bring to our lives proves how by getting the general public into as close a group they possibly can makes it easier for them to control thus affecting the consumer world to become the same everywhere. Consumer power is such a great tool that without this would the world fall to pieces?, there are targets to meet wherever you go and because of this worship of the state people are dragged into this consumerism war we all have with one another making it easy for targets to be meet, people always compete with one another making it easy for the media to create a war with others in any way possible.

The idea of being better or bigger than somebody else gives governments the easy access to getting people to warm and love the idea of consumerism without the masses realizing what is happening. Without humans buying things they dont need consumerism wouldnt exist, but the challenge of a better lifestyle that the media have crafted over time gives humans the incentive to make themselves happier by buying products and consuming things that others cant afford.

One photographer i looked at was Andreas Gursky as he has done some interesting things on the consumer one of these is his photograph of a 99 cent store pictured below.

like zombies they walk round the shop consuming goods, do they need them?

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/gursky/images/99cent_pop.jpg (13/10/08)

Andreas Gursky: The Photography

“Why is Andreas Gursky’s work so popular? 99 Cent (1999) is a shot of the interior of a discount store, showing racks and racks of colorfully packaged candy and food. A reflection of the goods shines on the roof of the store. Only a few people are in the store, separated by islands of food. In the photo, all of the merchandise is neatly ordered. The only decorations on the walls are 99-cent signs.

The contrast between the bright colors of the food, the multitude of product being sold, the orderly fashion in which the store is organized and the isolation of the people brings to mind the prevalence of unnecessary consumer goods in today’s world, which one might argue often works to overwhelm and isolate people rather than help them.”

http://www.photographers-and-photography.com/articles/photographers/famous-photographers-1950-present/andreas-gursky.php

(13/10/08)

This look on the 99 cent photo interests me and particularly “one might argue often works to overwhelm and isolate people rather than help them” the notion that maybe this isnt helping people, is it just adding extra stress that people have to keep up with in order to appear powerful as this is what the powerful people want us to do. If people cant keep up with power then power wont keep up with them. The artical reads “the orderly fashion in which the store is organized and the isolation of the people brings to mind the prevalence of unnecessary consumer goods in today’s world” why would something we need be so perfectly laid out if we needed the purchase we were making, we would know what we wanted as apposed to just going into this 99 cent store and purchasing things that wont keep us running day to day.