RANKIN- DESTROY PROJECT

When youth music was celebrating their 70th birthday to mark this special occasion they asked photographer, Ranking to ask 70 musicians and visual artists to destroy their own portraits taken by Ranking to create their own art.

The concept of the project was to give young children the freedom to express themselves however they wanted.

 I choose to look at this photograph of Marianne Faithfull taken by photograph Rankin. In a collaborative project called 'Destroy' musicians have reinterpreted portraits of themselves taken by Rankin.The colours of the image are very simple with the original photograph being black and white and the striking red background on which it was placed.

I choose to look at this photograph as I really liked it's simplicity but then it has that edge because it's all teared. My first reaction to the work was that I would definitely like to recreate something inspired by this photograph. I also liked the meaning behind the work, which Faithfull stated that she wanted to represent her 'rough' patch she had when she was diagnosed with cancer. The photograph represents her world breaking around her and her not being able to do anything about it, as if nothing fitted into place, parts of her missing and she didn't understand why. The meaning behind it was quite deep and inspired me a lot. 

This piece of photography reminded me of the works of Lucas Simoes.

This is the work done by Lucas Simoes, and independent artist based in Sao Paulo. Not only this photograph, but his whole work entirely reminded me of Rankin's Destroy project. Simoes says that his intention is to alter the original meaning of an object or photograph and create something new and different. Which is what Rankin's Destroy project is about, altering whats already there.

Rankin Inspired:

These were my interpretations of Rankin's destroy project. There wasn't really in any method I guess I just thought of ways that I would like people to see me and the way I see myself. 

For the first image I decided to cut different sized stripes out of myself and jumble them up. This to me represented that I am very mixed person, and I don't always have my heart set on something straight away, I prefer to have options.

The second image, I tried to make my self look like a sugar skull, to that of a mexican tradition in which they have 'Dia de Los Muertos' which means 'The day of the dead'. I really like this concept that they honour the dead and that they don't look as death as something sad, but rather a day to honour and remember their loved ones who have passed.

The third photograph I ripped of my face and wrote 'POW' in the middle. This represents one of many things. Firstly being that I have a very short fuse and get angry quite quickly, secondly the jokey side of me. As I tried to imitate the writing of a comic book, giving it that cartoon like style.

INITIAL IDEAS

For my first roll of film I decided to photograph the following: Obscured people, Children (Sally Mann), Slow shutter speed movement. I decided on them as I really like the freedom you can have with each. I also think they fit the theme of the project quite well. For inspiration I created a board on my pinterest and looked at different artists and images which related to the theme.

EXAM PROJECT:COVERT AND OBSCURED

LIGHT PROJECT- EVALUATION

For my final piece I decided to do 'on camera' double exposures. I came to this conclusion after looking at some pictures on pinterest . My main inspiration came from Christoffer Relander's beautiful double exposures which are also said to be done 'on

Camera. I began experimenting using previous film portraits and putting these on to a negative carrier along with another film of something like trees, or something a pattern just to get a feel of how it would look. It worked really well, after numerous attempts I found that working with an image with a white background works really well as all the white from the pattern will not show in the background but will show up on the darker areas which are the face, clothes and hair etc.

After doing this I decided that I would like to do my final piece on film rather than on a digital camera as it would be somewhat easier to achieve the double exposure look on camera. To do this I had to photograph pictures in the woods of trees, branches and twigs anything with pattern. I under exposed these images in order for the second set of photographs to show through. I then rewound the film on a changing bag and put it back into the camera. Once this was done I took my second set of images which were portraits of my sister. I used a moveable lamp for lighting and placed her against a plain white background as I didn't want something dark, as then nothing would show and nothing too busy.

After developing my photographs, I was quite pleased with them but then to develop them even further. I decided to do a 'masking technique'. I created a simple geometric pattern on Adobe Illustrator, printed it off and stuck onto a piece of black card. After cutting it out I placed it onto of the photographic paper and exposed the image for the right amount of time. When doing this I found that on the larger paper the time previously done on smaller paper wasn't long enough and needed to be left longer in order for it to be dark enough for the pattern to show. This became a bit of problem as paper had already been wasted when it was a little too late. I also found lining the pattern with the image quite difficult,and many a time the paper would move causing it to look wonky. 

All things considered I am quite happy with my final outcomes for the simple fact that I did it on a whim, not knowing if anything would come out or not. To be honest I didn't have high hopes for it as not being able to see the image after it has been taken makes the task that even more difficult. But I was pleased that I had some images which worked really well and that it almost looks like the double exposure is part of the portrait image.

In order to improve, I think I could have taken a little more care into recording done the settings and at which settings did the images come out best. This would be very time consuming but would be worth it in order to have an amazing set of double exposures.

In conclusion, I thought the project was quite challenging, and although it was quite free in the way you approached it, I at times prefer to have some structure and guidance for what I have to do. 

CHRISTOFFER RELANDER-ANALYSIS

The work I looked at for inspiration for my final piece was done by Christoffer Relander. Christoffer Relander was born in Finland December 1986, and is now based in Raseborg, his home town. I specifically looked at his 'We Are Nature-Multiple Exposure Portraits' as my main inspiration. 

All of the images were done in camera on a Nikon D700, in processing, the contrast and tones were adjusted. To better understand his work I want on a website named Behance which shows all of his photography work and another double exposure project he did named '1+1=1'.

I would say that there may not be any deeper meaning to the photographs but I think what he may have been trying to communicate was that we as humans aren't as in touch with nature as much as we should be and so he decided to document this. Instead of simply photographing a person in the woods, or a forest he combined the together making the image visually more striking and also very beautiful to look at.

Since the photographs are in black and white colour doesnt play much of a roll, its the use of contrast and tone which really help to make the photograph. In order to be able to see both photographs there had to be a good balance of contrast and tone between so that one wouldn't 'over shine' the other; as this would then defeat the entire point of the image.

I choose to look at Christoffer Relander's work because it really inspired me, and it was something that I hadn't really seen before and also for the fact that it was done in camera makes it just that more amazing. I admired how everything was crisp and clean and it is still hard to believe that it wasn't done on a computer. What I really like about the work is how the photographs of the leaves and branches fall seamlessly onto the face, as if they naturally belonged there. And also, even though most of the upper body if covered by the leaves and branches there is still enough detail to show that it is still in fact a portrait.