So… I’ve acted upon the feedback I was given during the last session and below are my final images.
As you probably can tell, I’ve extended the dialogue, which hopefully will convey what I wanted better.
I’ve actually photoshopped the background on the image above, to match the photograph I was given better, as my original photo had distracting things on the background and it needed to be plain. All I’ve done was clone stamped/healing brushed, plus tried to straighten up the picture – which will never look 100% right, as the kitchen island is actually slightly taller on the left… if I straightened that “horizon”, the papers wouldn’t look straight instead! But I think it’s decent enough!
Oh yeah, and this was my re-shot in the kitchen… I’m quite pleased with it, actually.
Putting it into context
I do realise focus could be better =/
On the image above I’ve actually photoshopped out the “Sure! =)” from the picture below.
Can you understand my boyfriend’s handwriting? lol
I quite like this shot, because each thing is in it for a reason, to convey something.
Hopefully it will be clear enough that one of the characters (the man, as he is a musician) is moving out as a consequence of the relationship not working.
Also, I’ve deliberately included the post-it notes on the corner so it can link to the next picture.
All the previous notes are on the floor… which is symbolic.
Moved out
And back to the beginning!
And that is my series!
I think it has improved a lot, and I’m particularly happy about the end and the narrative factor, which is obviously the most important in this project!
Oh, and I covered the bulb above the fridge with some paper towel, in an attempt to soften the light and minimise reflection on the fridge lol
* I would like to thank my neighbour Mike who lent me his guitar case for this shoot, and my other neighbour Marilyn who donated some of the cardboard boxes! 🙂
And that’s it! I hope you could follow my story and have somewhat enjoyed it! 🙂
Goodbye!
On my first feedback session I presented my idea for the Circular Narrative project: to show the start, development and breakdown of a relationship through the notes.
I must admit I really struggled to come up with an interesting idea for this project, and I wasn’t all that confident about this initially, but gladly people seemed to like it.
I thought it could start with a note to self as a reminder about a blind date. Then the next note would be the date’s number. Then a reminder about lunch with the person, then anniversary dinner, pick up test from clinic, first scan at pre-natal unit, collect wedding invitations… then pick up kids from “Footy Totz”/drop suit at dry cleaners, arrange appointment with divorce lawyer, custody hearing, finishing with the same blank note.
Together we analysed in detail the original image, where it could be set, also paying attention to creases etc.
Amongst other things, it was mentioned that the desk where the notes were could be in an office and that I could make it a work environment relationship. Or that I could place the notes on a fridge and have it as a dialogue between two people, instead of just “notes to self/reminders”. I thought that was a good idea.
I started to shoot my idea and showed these images to the group on my next feedback session:
I was very happy to hear that people thought the photo above was the actual image I received! Means it’s pretty similar, which was the idea!! 🙂
This time around, Lawrence joined our group, which was cool.
The main feedback this time was that the story I was trying to cover was too long, and therefore it would be more challenging to convey this extensive time passage. They suggested I kept the “relationship theme”, but that made it a shorter one.
With that in mind, I thought it over. I came up with two dialogues, one office based (of somebody joining a team, being asked out, going out, and becoming colder with the colleague after the weekend) and a relationship between a doctor and a musician, who struggle to spend time together as their professions have opposite times – and use post it notes to communicate at home.
I took some shots for the latter story and showed them on the following session. At that point, I was advised to stick with this story and discard the office one.
I was told only to keep this open fridge picture if planning to include other “interruptions”.
The feedback session was very helpful, and many good ideas were given. Some of the things I’ve been told included “the notes are placed too neatly, mess them around a bit”, “Human reference (hand writing note), you should have more or none”, “‘We need to talk'”, amongst others.
Another point I’d have to think about was how to link the office picture I took with the kitchen environment. I thought maybe I could include a kitchen utensil on the desk shot (to be my second image), which would hopefully make it look like it was shot in a kitchen..? Another option would be to re-shoot my first image in the kitchen – although I’d need to figure out the logistics to make it work, due to the physical space of that room.
The work of Gregory Crewdson got mentioned in class, and at the time it didn’t click, but I’ve actually seen his work before in a show called “Photographers at Work”, alongside other professionals.
He is an American photographer who is best known for his for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods.
Crewdson works with a production team of up to sixty people, including a cinematographer and director of photography.
Below are some examples of his work:
“American artist Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962) has said that his elaborately constructed melodramas are influenced by his memory of childhood. His psychoanalyst-father’s office was in the basement of their New York City home, and Crewdson would press his ear to the floorboards to try and imagine the stories being told in the therapy sessions. In the mid1990s, Crewdson’s tableau photographs were set in models of suburban backyards and undergrowth built in his studio. They are a mix of the bizarre and the disturbing, yet are so highly camp and entertaining. Stuffed animals and birds perform strange and ominous rituals, while plaster casts of Crewdson’s body are shown being slowly devoured by insects, surrounded by lush foliage. Crewdson later shifted into a more directorial mode. In his black-and-white series Hover (1996-97), he staged strange happenings in suburban housing areas, photographing them from a crane above the rooftops. More recently, in his Twilight series, he worked with a cast and crew of the kind found on a film set. Here it is not only the display of rituals and the paranormal but also the construction of archetypal characters who carry out these acts that create the psychological drama. Significantly, at the back of the book about the Twilight series is a ‘documentary views’ section that shows the entire production process, the crew members, and the moments before and after a photograph is taken, confirming the degree to which Crewdson’s tableau photography is a production issue.”
(The Photograph As Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton, p.67-68)
“The sinister and seething underbelly of suburbia has long been a source of inspiration for artists. Built as aspirational and almost paradisiacal habitats for the middle classes, these areas outside of the city centre become, for American artist Crewdson, sites for bizarre and unexplainable happenings. Tapping into a host of paranoid fears, it is as if the lid has been lifted to expose the fantasies and anxieties of those living there. The Sanctuary photographs, featured here, we shot on location in the Cinecittà Studios in Rome and the series is Crewdson’s first to be shot outside America. Here his focus has shifted from dramas being played out to scenographic architecture.
‘My first impulse is to make the most beautiful picture I can. But then I’m always interested in this idea of a kind of undercurrent in the work. I think of that completely in psychological terms. The perfect façade and what’s beneath the surface of that façade. I’m very interested in the uncanny and a way of looking to find something mysterious or terrible within everyday life. For better or for worse, a lot of my newer pictures seem less dark. The uncanniness is less explicit and more poetic in feel.
I have always been very interested in the idea of telling a story, in narrative and the limitations of photographs. Where other more traditional modes of story-telling such as film and literature move forward in time the photograph is still and frozen. From day one, I have been interested in taking that limitation and trying to find the strength in it – like a story that is forever frozen in between moments before and after and always left askind of unresolved question.
Even though my work is primarily influenced by film, I consider myself first and foremost a photographer. I like the idea that I am able to instil, in a single moment, every imaginable kind of production crew technique to make a perfect image. I work with a production crew of about sixty people. Almost every one of them comes out of a film background. There are two essential ways in which we work. One is on a sound-stage in a big studio. We build everything up from nothing. The second is on location. On location it’s pretty much like a film crew coming to town and there’s a huge amount of interaction between the crew and the town and the people who live there. There are also months of planning. The big difference is that with a film crew there is a rush to get many different scenes or shots done over the course of a day, whereas we usually spend two or three days working towards making enormous production and so many people working on the pictures, the pictures themselves are very quiet, very still and emptied out in a certain sense.
I think my pictures are really about a kind of tension between my need to make a perfect picture and the impossibility of doing so. Something always fails, there’s always a problem, and photography fails in a certain sense. It’s so limited. Despite the fact that we work enormously in post-production, reproduction is reproduction and it will always, one way or another, fail you. This is what drives you to the next picture.'”
(Art Photography Now by Susan Bright, p.80-83)
He has cited the films Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe as having influenced his style, as well as the painter Edward Hopper and photographer Diane Arbus.
He is now a professor at Yale University and his photographs have sold for up to $150,000!
A fellow classmate posted the link to the video I saw on TV, which is definitely worth watching:
I personally find it insane how time consuming and expensive it must be to set up to shoot. Although I like the result, the thought of the whole process behind it makes me uncomfortable. Even for a perfectionist like me!!
But the aesthetics are pleasing to the eye, and I quite like the highly processed effect, the lighting and the mood. Many of them do look like they belong to a different world.
Sources: Art Photography Now, by Susan Bright, The Photograph As Contemporary Art, by Charlotte Cotton and internet.
Roland Barthes developed a concept that every narrative is interwoven with five codes that drive one to maintain interest in a story. The first two codes involve ways of creating suspense in narrative, the first by unanswered questions, the second by anticipation of an action’s resolution. These two codes are essentially connected to the temporal order of the narrative.
The Hermeneutic Code
The hermeneutic code refers to plot elements of a story that are not explained. They exist as enigmas that the reader wishes to be resolved. A detective story, for example, is a narrative that operates primarily by the hermeneutic code. A crime is exposed or postulated and the rest of the narrative is devoted to answering questions raised by the initial event.
The Proairetic Code
The proairetic code refers to plot events that imply further narrative action. For example, a story character confronts an adversary and the reader wonders what the resolution of this action will be. Suspense is created by action rather than by a reader’s wish to have mysteries explained. The final three codes are related to how the reader comprehends and interprets the narrative discourse.
The Semic Code
A seme is a unit of meaning or a sign that express cultural stereotypes. These signs allow the author to describe characters, settings and events. The semic code focuses upon information that the narration provides in order to suggest abstract concepts. Any element in a narrative can suggest a particular, often additional, meaning by way of connotation through a correlation found in the narrative. The semic code allows the text to ‘show’ instead of ‘tell’ by describing material things.
The Symbolic Code
The symbolic code refers to a structural structure that organizes meanings by way of antitheses, binary oppositions or sexual and psychological conflicts. These oppositions can be expressed through action, character and setting.
The Cultural Code
The cultural code designates any element in a narrative that refers to common bodies of knowledge such as historical, mythological or scientific. The cultural codes point to knowledge about the way the world works as shared by a community or culture.
Together, these five codes function like a ‘weaving of voices’. Barthes assigns to the hermeneutic the Voice of Truth; to the proairetic code the voice of Empirics ; to the semic the Voice of the Person; to the cultural the Voice of Science; and to the symbolic the Voice of Symbol. According to Barthes, they allow the reader to see a work not just as a single narrative line but as a braiding of meanings that give a story its complexity and richness.
Below are some of the notes I took in class about “Narrative Structures”:
Linear Structure:
Beginning (audience introduced to characters and story) Middle (Events – story build) End (closure)
Open Structure:
The audience is left to wonder what happens next and make sense of it themselves. (Ex. Inception, The Italian Job)
Closed Structure:
Definite ending – clear conclusion for the audience.
Circular Narrative:
The narrative begins at the end events (often with the climax). The audience is taken on a journey, arriving back where they started. (Ex. Pulp Fiction)
Linear: Chronological
Non-linear: back and forth (Ex. La Vie en Rose)
Tableau: Single narrative image (Ex. Gregory Crewdson)
Tableau Vivant: Theatrical, dramatically lit (Ex. Red Saunders)
This is an individual project in which we have to create a narrative series that start and end with a picture we’ve been randomly assigned.
We must produce a minimum of 5 images, and the overall piece needs to be cohesive, have a flow and generate a meaning, that will be understood by the audience.
So yesterday I started my second year at the University of Salford, and we were already given two new briefs to work on. Both of them relate to the “narrative” theme and will be covered on this blog.
The “Yet to be Realised” brief is a collective project, which I associated with that game in which one draws a head on a piece of paper, folds it and passes it on to the next person, who, not having seeing the previous drawing, needs to draw the torso and so on. At the end, you open the drawing and find a funny picture over all.
Well, we received a list with our classmates’ names on it, and pretty much the first person on the list needs to either take or select a photo that tells a story (or part of it) within 24h, justify the choice in writing, and put the print and text in a sealed envelope and hand it in to a member of staff. He/she must not comment anything about it with any classmates.
Then, the individual must e-mail the student who is next on the list with their chosen image, but with no explanation. The person who receives it has 24h to take their own photo (or choose it from a different source), continuing the story from the previous picture.
Each person should only receive one image (from the person immediately before them on the list).
At the end, we’ll open all envelopes and see “the bigger picture”, revealing what form our collective narrative project took.
I’m towards the end of the list (at last!!) and expect to receive my picture on October 22nd.
I am looking forward to this, and the result is unpredictable and therefore it’s exciting.
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Areas of Photographic Practice A 