Research • Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood is a filmmaker, photographer and visual artist, and I am going to analyse her self portrait works that she has produced.

I love Sam Taylor-Wood's work because of the eerieness but safeness of the shots. This photograph is taken from a collection called "Gracefully Suspended", where she explores the ideas of gravity and weightlessness and "places herself in situations where her interior and external sense of self is in conflict" (My Modern Metropolis, 2009)

This is the collection of self portraits titled "Bram Stoker's Chair Series". I have always wondered about these photographs, why has the chair not got a shadow? Is there some importance as to why she is only highlighted in the shadows? I think this series focusses on her darker side, which is why she is only highlighted in the shadows. The shadows are mimicking her at the moment, but later on in the series, or if she were to continue it, the shadows could walk away, or not copy her anymore, becoming a lone entity and leading its own life? If this were a circular narrative, the shadow could move away, and then the main character (in this series, the main character being Sam Taylor-Wood herself), could retrieve her shadow and put it back where it belongs, ending back at the first photograph. This would be my idea if I had the keyword "light", but alas, I do not.

Research - Jeff Wall

I have studied the work of Jeff Wall before and always found his work extremely interesting in terms of narrative and storyline hidden deep within the images.

In this photograph, I can see a man, facing away from the camera, in a room full of bulbs and lights, a well illuminated room. The room is chaotic, messy, but a typical artists workplace (we like to work in mess and chaos sometimes!). He seems to be engrossed in what he is doing, although I am not sure what it could be. Jeff Wall produces a lot of staged narrative photograph, and this is a great example. You can almost hear the man in the photograph's cry for help, maybe the lights are a desperate attempt to get someone to notice him, save him from a nightmare he is living? Or maybe he feels content in his room, and the lights make him feel warm and happy? If I could see the mans face I would be more certain, but Wall has been clever and hidden it, so it becomes an open structural narrative!

Research • Duane Michals

Duane Michals is the king of the narrative, through his step by step photographic like 'movie' he produces. I have chosen two pieces of his photographic work to analyse, both following the narrative approaches we have learnt about.

"The Fallen Angel" is a piece of narrative I am familiar with and viewed in a gallery some years ago. If I was to place Duane Michals work in a narrative approach, I would place it in a "open structure", as the conclusion is not definite and we are left to make our own decisions. What is happening? Where is the mystery man going? Has he taken anything? We are also made to look at the photograph in more detail to try and answer our questions and come to a conclusion.

This is a circular narrative, the types of imagery we have been focussing on in our research as they relate exclusively to our final outcome. The beginning photographs shows a bathroom that looks normal, or so we think. We then see that the bathroom is small, and someone has put their foot in it. This makes us feel confused, we have misjudged the situation and now know the bathroom is a fake, it is very small and unreal! The third shows Duane Michals himself in the room with his foot in the middle. Why? What is he doing? The fourth shows the previous photograph in a book, possibly being held by Duane himself, talking about his photography and ways and means of doing things. The fifth is a zoomed out shot of this, not revealing much more apart from the person is sitting down to read! The whole narrative plays on our perceptions and come back to the place we started.

Susan Bright • Art Photography Now

"Art Photography Now" by Susan Bright examines the concept of the narrative and how photographers use them to develop their work. She describes a narrative as becoming the "most synonymous with contemporary art photography"

"The term narrative suggests a story, and therefore movement. A story needs to progress in order to be told" I was thinking about this concept in regards to a circular narrative and understand my narrative has to have structure to develop as a story, much like a film.

Research • Dina Goldstein

Dina Goldstein's work focusses on the work of the hidden fairytale, the fairytale that has not been told and the truth behind it in modern day society. Her collection is titled "Fallen Princesses" and focusses on the commonly known Disney Princesses and their downfall in the modern age. Beauty from Beauty and the Beast has been given excessive plastic surgery, The Little Mermaid is locked up in a tank at a aquariaum and Snow White has become a young mother with a lazy, couch potato husband.

This, I feel, is the best edited photograph from the series. The Little Mermaid was my favourite Disney fairytale when I was a child, so seeing it portrayed in this way makes me think of how innocent my childhood was and how times have changed when growing up. When we were younger, our minds were protected from the wrong doings in society. Sex, drugs and 'rock and roll', to coin a popular phrase, were hidden from our innocent eyes and we were not educated on the bad things that existed. I feel that this series of images plays with that, opening our eyes to the wrong side of fairytales.

This is the most hard hitting photograph, and I picked it as I wanted to speak about it from a photographical point of view, as well as a personal point of view. The image is very clean, also clinical, everything is laid out in a particular fashion meaning the image is not too clumsy and busy. The main focus of the photograph is the girl without her hair, clutching it inbetween her hands. There also seems to be a glow around her head, like a white light radiating from her. Now, from a personal point of view, I think this image represents, again, the innocent in children of the modern age. A lot of children are not aware of illnesses like cancer until it affects their family, I think this advertisement should be used as a campaign for children's cancer awareness, in an attempt to raise knowledge in the younger generation.

Research • Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is one of my favourite photographers of all time, but when we started this brief, I never looked at her work from a narrative point of view, more of a self portrait and technical point of view. I have decided to investigate the narrative of two photographs, both from the "Film Stills" collection.

Cindy Sherman always used herself in her film still images, which also provoked some questions in my head. Why has she used herself? Is this a reference to her life, dressing up to remain anonymous to the world perhaps? Maybe she has some deeper concerns within her life, like anxiety or confidence issues which make her take on a different persona in her imagery?

Throughout her entire body of work, Sherman investigates particular traits within women's roles in society. Above, looks to be the typical house wife. The pan in the foreground blurred by depth of field and the washing up liquid next to her suggests she is a stay at home housewife, or maybe a busy businesswoman who does the cleaning at night after a day at the office? However, the way she is glancing off to the side suggests that she is not happy with this everyday, maybe she is wondering how to get away and start afresh? Cindy Sherman's narratives leave a lot to be explored, and a lot of questions are raised in my mind. The who, what, where, when and why is asked, which is good when I need to analyse the work of others.

First Impressions • Initial Brief

Back at University for another year, and I was briefed today by Lawrence Giles on our first module of the year "Areas of Photographic Practice A". The module seems to be quite interesting and something that will challenge us as individuals and as a collective.

We started off by looking at a slideshow of work that delves into the narrative format by photographers such as Duane Michals, Cindy Sherman, Karen Knorr, Colin Blakely, Red Saunders and Dina Goldstein. All these photographers presented their work in a conceptually driven way, with a strong and powerful story. I really liked the work of Dina Goldstein, I had come across her work before but did not know the name of the photographer, therefore, I could not personally research more into her practice as a photographer and any other sets of photographs she has produced. At first I was unsure what the brief was asking us to do, but then it became clear when I was given my keyword.

"SEAT" is my keyword, which can involve a vast amount of things. Since I received this work, ideas have been going over and over in my head as to what I can produce relating to this image. The thought that keeps repeating itself is the thought that people automatically think that seats are stationery, and you don't move in them. This lead me to think about transport seats, such as bus, train and bicycle seats and the effort that is made to use them. I also thought of the impact of the "routine", and how people can fall into a routine, whether it be to go to work or school, or just a general routine when they have a day off.

We also learnt about narrative codes and structures, and what they mean. I learnt that "open structures" have no set perceptions, you are left to think what you think and not drawn to a certain end, such as a cliffhanger in a film. A "close structure" is quite the opposite, there are set perceptions that you must follow and the story always come to a conclusion, and a certain one at that. Then there are "circular structures", which are the ones we are focussing on in this module. The ending is the starting point, they share the same photograph or scene and relate back to each other. We then started to discuss films we had seen that fit the pathway of a circular structure, I thought of the film "Momento" where the main character has 5 minute amnesia and forces himself to remember, but the film runs in a backwards fashion, meaning we learn more about his past further through the film. Other people also discuss the circular narratives of "Kill Bill 1 and 2", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Pulp Fiction" and "500 Days of Summer". I have not seen these films, but make it my aim to watch at least one to get more of an understanding of the circular structure.