Hannah Starkey

When thinking of other photographers that look at the everyday I thought of Hannah Starkey who I looked at previously before christmas briefly. Hannah very much sets up everyday situations and makes the images look as though real life is unfolding in front of our eyes.

“Hannah Starkey’s photographs reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film. Starkey’s images picture women engaged in regular routines such as loitering in the street, sitting in cafes, or passively shopping. Starkey captures these generic ‘in between’ moments of daily life with a sense of relational detachment.”

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/hannah_starkey.htm (02/02/09)

This can play influence on my idea as I am looking to capture everyday life with working class in there workplaces. The idea detaching ones self from the moments of daily life would be something that would come across in the images as we would see these people in only their work place. By looking at a small piece of one persons life we can only imagine what these people spend the rest of there time doing but with the idea of “working class” people would make these assumptions themselves.

The images will be a way of looking at the “strangers” that surround us daily very much like Starkeys images these types of people are seen everywhere on a day to day basis but each are entirely different something that I want to portray in the images. I like the idea of Starkeys images “illustrating the gap between personal fragility and social construction, and merging the experiences of strangers with our own.”

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/hannah_starkey.htm (02/02/09)

My images could act as a way of bringing these strangers to our attention in a deeper way than just being workers behind your favorite bar or building you new house but as individuals and not just part of a construction to our own society and lives.

Photography Idea

I have recently been looking at the work of Ewen Spencer and find it very inspiration. This work is very different to the images I am currently producing for my final major project however I am planning the possibility of doing another piece that is portrait based. I would not be going into this with my eyes closed as I have done many portraits with friends and family in the past and am confident of my technical ability in regards to this.

I have a few ideas for this. One is to look at young people and how these people are affected by their pears and heroes. I would like the piece to explore how teens are influecned by what they see in television, newspaper and magazines etc. Some issues that could be looked at are: Drinking, Sports, Bands, Television, Models, Fighting, Knife Crime, Gun Crime, Drug abuse. I would want this to explore the notion that the media is having a huge effect on our current age group of teenagers, the idea that teens are growing up faster than before and following some elders that are destructive to themselves let alone anybody else. Some examples of the people in current society that could be looked at include Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Anarexic Models, skins (TV) other shows that promote drink and drugs etc.

Another idea is to look at the working class, this is something of interest to me. With the times ever changing and more people going to university and doing various other things people are very unaware of what “working class” is. This would be done as a documentary style piece and a look at real people that keep Britain alive. The idea I currently have in my head is to look at the “typical” working class culture that people would look at in the street and describe as working class. I feel the idea of working class is in a way dying and this is how I think it offers something interesting as these days people claim that classes cross over very much. On the bbc website in this article it is described “Culturally this country still is predominantly working class,” he says. “Superficially it seems we are middle class because we have more of the trappings of middle class life, but the majority of people are just working class with more money, not middle class.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6295743.stm (01/01/09)

This is an interesting debate and is a reason why this piece could be of interest to people. With regards to working class I want to look at how most people would describe working class, I have a list of examples of people that fall under the “working class” category: Burger Man, Builder, Tarmaker, Postman, Milkman, Gardener, Barman/ woman.

When looking through this list I have realised these people are the everyday workers that very much depict Britain and maybe this is another approach to this that I could look at.

The work of Ewen Spencer is something that I would take great inspiration from as they are set up shoots which still represent reality and this is what I hope to achieve. The images I have chosen below I like because of the asthetic values.

http://www.ewenspencer.com/ (01/02/09)

The images above present a clear image of how I would like to photograph my subjects in the sense that the people appear relaxed and in everyday situations. I like how the shots appear to be snapshots of people going about there day to day lives however it is clear from the lighting that thought and consideration has gone into each photograph. With the recession currently going on I feel this could add an extra aspect to the piece.

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.

Hampton In Ardon Shoot

Here are a few shots I took when out shooting on the 29th January.

These images look at parts of Hampton In Ardon that we havnt explored yet. What drives me to this project and the reason I enjoy this so much is because of the new places you get to visit, I love how these places are so familiar while still being so unfamiliar. I am drawn to how we see areas like these on day to day basis however just dismiss them, I guess in a way these images are capturing a world that is so obvious in the frame of an image but by presenting it in a way that cannot truely be seen. When I say it cannot really be seen I am talking in terms of colors that are coming out of my images that to the naked eye cannot be seen for example the landscape with tree above where the sky is seen very red in comparison to what my eye could actually seen. The tree almost seems surreal something that I like very much, it looks slightly like a Gregory Crewdson image as if it is staged, this creates a reality unreality style image.

Recently looked at

Todd Hido

This video on Todd Hido is something I found very interesting as I like to shoot at night and am drawn towards houses at night through photography of Hido’s I have seen before. What I like about this interview is how Todd speaks about having brief explanation and letting the photographs talk the viewer and making in a sense a paper movie where the happenings in between the shots are up to you to interpret. This is an approach I could possible take towards my photographs as I feel that photographs are there for people own interpretations, I am taking images that I like so by taking these images and looking at them and creating my own narrative I feel could be a good way to go.

Chris Cunningham

“We suffer everyday, what is it for
These crimes of illusion, are fooling us all
And now I am weary and I feel like I do”

These are the opening words to this song but it is the video that I want to look at. The video for me very much looks at the notion of mortality and immortality. The piece is very much like a photograph in the respect that it has very high contrasting shots and what we see appears like it should be a still because of what they are doing, we see a floating human something that is impossible however with a still image being mid float is possible and we could pause a person in this state. I feel the piece is very unreal like it is a dream, the walls playing the closing of thought into sleep, the onlooker through the window suggesting an empowering position like somebody looking down on a sleeping person or a dead person.

Effect on me - Looking at dreams and the stereotypical vision of them, we dream of great things happening to us “in my dreams” “In your dreams” when really dreams don’t tend to happen like this, we sometimes dream biggest fears.

Football Idea - Whole thing is build up like a dream with the viewer imagining the sounds and actions that will happen on this big game that he has coming soon. SO people led to believe its a great pro footballer when its not, built up in a way that suggests this

Addition of Idea - Looking at Mortality and Immortality when sleeping “sleep is like a temporary death” – BOB DYLAN, Workingman Blues #2. Surreal things that could happen when in this temporary death. Soundscapes of the world being missed when asleep, things that could effect you and things that don’t.

Photographic Idea with this - A man asleep, with things he could be thinking about on the wall with images.

Gregory Crewdson

http://coromandal.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/amstaged_0305.jpg (27/01/09)

http://blog.camera80.ro/images/2006/november/gregory-crewdson-6.jpg (27/01/09)

When thinking about paper movies that Todd Hido talked about I began to think of Crewdson’s work and his very set up images that are put in place to look like stills from movies. With very dramatic lighting and well positioned subjects Crewdson is able to make narratives with his work, viewers can take what they are seeing and interpret it in a way that makes a narrative, this narrative can be different according to the persons perception of what they are seeing. This is the real beauty of these images as the “movie” can be dufferent to any one person with the images being exactly the same, its up to us to decide on what happens inbetween.

Effect on me - This is a way I could approach a piece of work however by also using images that I do not set up and then fill in gaps with things where I have set up the images and what is being put across. One take I could use for this would to look at our ever changing world and the pace at which it is travelling, places are easier than ever before to get to, the internet makes communication almost possible wherever and whenever. Has this made normal interaction better or worse and are we effected by the fact that people can have to much contact with one another.

“This is the world of Gregory Crewdson, an intensely realistic unreality, in which the landscape of life is transformed into a heightened blend of nature and artifice”

“Crewdson creates a seductive visual science fiction, gleefully calling into question our notions of truth and reality”

“one can’t tell where truth stops and fiction begins”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n8_v31/ai_13905162 27/01/09)

This idea of “realistic unreality” is something I find interesting in todays society because it is like we live in this world that is out of the real but very much in the real. As if we are moving to fast for ourselves, these images that I could pursue would want to explore the speed of life.

Football Sound Piece

With my sound piece that I did last term I would like to expand this from just sound to having bold text on screen that shows what we are being heard.

When watching a DVD called “Storyrooms” and a look at the instilation by Paul Sermon I thought about how I could make this an instilation piece. Sermon spoke about his instilation where people could see one another on screen together without being with each other. Although my piece will be entirely different to this I like the idea of people engaging with what is happening and by placing people in a space that they cannot get out of that is enclosed and therefore getting the audience to engage and become part of this spectacle of sound.

The idea around this very much focuses on becoming part of the spectacle, the notion that you are experiencing something that is entirely different to the surroundings and your experience of the space. The sounds you hear will contrast with the space around you and what you can see. I will aim to achieve something that in a very similar way to football brings you out of yourself and you actually become part of this spectacle that you can hear without the traditional view of football that is the actual seeing and the movement of the people on the pitch. The piece I feel will probably contain sounds that create some people to become uncomfortable however this is a good thing because this is very much common in football across the country and world, words are said in aggression and this is something that very much portrays people senses of the game. Are these words needed and how much difference does it actually have on the viewer.

In regards with recording this piece I have decided that as apposed to walking around the pitch like I had done on last terms piece I will set up the miranze at the end of either goal, this will be done because I want the miranze to act as goal mouths which will give an impression of a pitch. An addition to this when exhibiting it will be to have the sound coming out of speakers from either end of the room so when walking from one side to the room you get a feeling of a pitch and the idea of the sound becoming louder where the goals are and where the game is won and lost, by standing in the middle you will get a sense of how without the visuals that such an important part of the game is missed when its just sound as apposed to a visual.

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.

Walking The High Line – Joel Sternfeld

“In his series of photographs of an abandoned elevated railway in New York, Joel Sternfeld has exposed a strip of land running through the heart of one of the world’s densest cities which has somehow escaped the clutches of the real-estate developers for the last 25 years. Raised 30 feet in the air, cutting through converted factories and dividing city blocks, the “High Line” runs from Manhattan’s West Village up to 34th Street. It was built in the 1930s to accommodate the traffic from ships docking at the piers on the Hudson River. The line saw its last train in 1980 and has since languished in a state of sublime oblivion.”

http://www.thedrawbridge.org.uk/issue_2/walking_the_high_line/ (13/01/09 )

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/3/assets/images/main/sternfeld_1.jpg (13/01/09)

http://www.thehighline.org/img/newsletter/112106/sternfeld.jpg (13/01/09)

This is an inspiration to the Coventry to Birmingham piece as it looks at a solid story which is something we are in a way lacking. I like the way the train tracks have been shot in each of the shots and this is something that we could adopt in order to give the piece more structure and reasoning. This piece helps me realise that there needs to be more theoretical reasoning behind what we are doing and by researching the destinations this can be achieved.

The aspect I like about this is how you see the tracks as not looked after and overgrown, you can see these tracks are rusty and old which add to the images and make them more beautiful and more interesting images, this is a reason why I feel we can not just look at the train stops and this only as I feel not only would the story of it be weak but the images themselves would appear uninteresting and unapealing to the everyday person as train stops are seen everyday by people and rarely differ from place to place. It could be interesting if you were to photograph every train station in Britain or something but on just one half an hour route would not be enough to make a substantial piece of work. Having said this I think if we do look at the destination’s in their own right I would want to include the stations as a way of emphasizing to the audience where the places are and a way make the book break itself into chapters.

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.

Todd Hido

Todd Hido is a photographer I have looked at a lot for the last year or so and his work is very inspirational to me. The work of house hunting, outskirts and roaming are what I really enjoy looking at aesthetically as these shots create aerie messages that explore places that Todd Hido has visited.

http://www.vvork.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/todd.jpg (10/01/09)

These images are all very dark and often covered with fog which I feel adds some dimension to the image. I like the way the colours come out onto the images and this is something that I aim to achieve when thinking aesthetically about images as for me it is all about images and images only. I am aiming to make beautiful photos that people look at and feel the mood of the place and the atmosphere when the image was produced. A light on can question so much for me who is in there? what are they doing? what is the interior like? all questions you can never really know the answer to however this is for me the great power in the images. In an interview for seesaw magazine Hido states “when I edit my work into books or shows; that is where the sense of consistency comes from” http://seesawmagazine.com/roaming_pages/roaming_interview.html (10/01/09) which for me makes perfect sense, the idea that a person can read the images like an essay or a film is something that very much interest’s me.

A quote that is on Todd Hido’s website by Luc Sante that I find ever so interesting is “Things look strange when you’re a stranger. Things that to locals, natives, homies are so familiar they are barely visible anymore, look strange to you. What might be dully familiar or vaguely comforting in your own neighborhood can look desolate, forbidding, strange, if you see it somewhere else, at night in fog.” www.toddhido.com (10/01/09)