For component 1 ´techniques and processes´ I researched and evaluated a range of photographers and artists such as Man ray, Pierre Cordier and Dolores Marat. Through the course, I used these artists for inspiration on photo structure as well as what compositions of an image goes well with what.
Firstly during the corse, I researched the artists Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy Nagy and Floris Neususs. These were all inspirations for doing work in the darkroom. Creating Photograms meant looking at photography in a different way to out door, light photographs. A photogram is an image taken without a camera but placing objects on light sensitive paper and exposing hem to light. When researching Man Ray, it meant looking at opaque objects and how they would respond to light as well as introducing outlines such as spirals and circles to photography. After researching, i began experimenting in the darkroom with light sensitive paper and chemicals that maintain a Photogram. These experiments consisted of trying different timeframes of exposing light and how well they worked.
After looking at photograms, it introduced other forms of photography using light sensitive paper. Looking further into this, i begin to research artists such as Justin Quinnel and Nancy Breslin. Pinhole photography is produced by using a small container and filling it with light sensitive paper and puncturing a small hole in the container exposing a small amount of light. Whilst experimenting with Pinhole photography, I learnt techniques such as timing in photography. Pinhole photography can be seen as extremely tedious due to its need of exposing light for a long time, but this meant alot of experimentation with this factor was necessary.
Continuing with experimenting on light sensitive paper, I begin researching the artist Piere Cordier. Cordier is an artist who worked on investigating how different chemicals would work on the photographic paper, Therefore creating Chemigrams. The results for this kind of project involved different splats, shapes and marks on the light sensitive paper. When experimenting on chemigrams myself, i tried using my own ´chemicals´ such as perfumes, bleaches and inks. These experiments resulted in different patterns forming on the paper, mainly consisting with brown, beige and yellow tones. Overall, i was satisfied with my results in this project.
Researching photography in a new and more artistic way helped me begin to look at Cyanotypes. Cyanotypes are a photo printing technique that produces a cyan-blue print. This again, like Photograms, Pinhole photography and Chemigrams, focused a lot on timing of exposure. The way i experimented with this was by doing it outside. I did this because the sun seemed like the best source of lighting for a long exposure. I experimented by putting different natural items such as leaves, branches and pinecones on the cyanotype paper then left for the exposure. I came to the conclusion that despite their differences, Cyanotypes were very similar to Photograms in the way of leaving objects on some sort of light sensitive paper. The overall outcome to this experiment worked quite well because of my experimenting with different timings.
For ´Personal Projects´ this involved looking at the topics Edges, Fragments, Light Painting, Street Photography,Abstraction and a summer project ´journey´. A lot of these projects involved creating a final piece.
For the topic of Edges, i began researching the artist Luis Barragán. Luis mainly focused his photography on the construction of building and the edges found on walls and blocks of housing. After looking into this i researched edges on pinterest. I came across various images of how people took the aspect of ´Edges´ from peoples faces. For my final piece in this project, i took photographs of front and side profiles of peoples faces and sculptures the images on a rectangular dressing screen type sculpture. Overall my final piece came out how I wanted it to. During the process, I tried using a minimalistic approach to the design of my sculpture and focused on the simplicity of the shades black and white. I did this to have more of an impact on the edges of my images rather than the colour and brightness.
After, I began to research abstract photographers such as Saul Leiter and John baldessari. When experimenting phtography it meant approaching it in a simplistic way. I began by taking minimalistic photographs of crumbled paper and small paper sculptures of flourescent colours. When looking into creating a final piece for the subject of ´Abstract´ my composition was based on abstract art as well as abstract photography. I chose to base my images on two same models throughout the piece to present the abstract images on a basic day and the different lighting and backgrounds that one day may consist of. The construction of my piece was based on a triangular cone sculpture withe the images placed on the inside.
Finally, In component 1 i chose to research and look into the topic ´Fragments´ in photography. Fragments came across to me as a subject that really focused on the detail of images. I chose to create my piece on this because I hoped it would create something different to my other two pieces (Abstraction and Edges) despite it still being related to abstraction. Fragments also seems to be quite a challenging subject as its often difficult to capture a small detail and make it the center of a piece. However, I believed that working on something like this could´ve developed me as a photographer and help me take images in new ways .For this experimentation, I was inspired by both Maurizio Galimberti and David Hockney. I chose to focus on how both artists take images of the same thing. i then developed this into a piece focused on fragmentation of different perspectives of a lock.