…and some research
Things
This is my favorite photography genre, collections, leaning towards ‘wasi-sabi’, the broken down, the neglected and old. However, as this is a well rehearsed and ‘seen’ subject, I should challenge myself and look elsewhere.
There are an inexhaustible number of ‘things’ in the world to photograph as collections.
Given the short time span to collect the things to photograph if they are not already to hand is a limiting factor. I’ve got a sinks project going that has been going for 5 years!
I also find myself stuck for something new and fresh (that I haven’t done before and neither has anyone else). Looking at Pinterest with the key words typology photograph, before you even get to the images of suggestions there is a list of possibilities that seems endless. Once on Pinterest anything you can think of is probably there, and if not there, perhaps here: https://thetypologist.tumblr.com/.
Here are some different ways of thinking about consistency when putting together typologies or collections of things. It is probably true of heads and views too.
An evening walk and ‘seeing’ for the first time the variation in the rear lights of different car models. I collected blue cars, because our local car dealer is only selling the most popular car model this year in blue!
I am not entirely happy with the right hand end image because it doesn’t bracket in the same way the left hand image does. I’ll keep my seeing eyes open!
Heads
I’m making the case here to move from portraits of heads to a wider interpretation that includes or focuses on heads.
As a potential idea interpretating the theme heads, the Duane Michals collection of images in fig 4 gets into this category because in this ‘sequence’ collection, a story is told as heads focus on looking, seeing and turning in recognition.
I found this idea in fig 5 of interest because it is a fully formed concept of my budding flower heads idea.
In the event I’m going to try out an idea based on the 1930’s game of Physogs and the surrealist art game Exquisite Corpse. These two ideas can play to one or two of my other interests: book making and the web applications.
…and here one of the ideas that I have come up with influenced by the Physogs game of strips containing facial features. I have used the head of a 7 year old girl and applying a variety of processing features in Affinity Photo I have altered her mouth nose and eyes to change the head image in 9 different ways.
Views
Right from the beginning I was going to focus on this theme to produce my collection as I have explored my local area extensively, mining it for images. I have an ongoing idea to put together several images from a photography walk along a local footpath known locally as ‘The Brook”. My intention was to use a combination of images made since the start of this course and others taken over several seasons. The difference in seasons and available light will be evident.
In the end making more appropriate images for this purpose (in the rain!), collating and organising and then producing a way of showing the images was not going to fit into the time frame I have set for this assignment, so something for the future.
Here is a ‘views’ collection from the many images I took whilst wandering in my cousin’s vast rambling garden last month. I think I’m beginning to understand a difference (maybe) between views and landscapes as suggested in the reading Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View by Rosalind Krauss, Perhaps it comes down to a suggestion, that in the terms of the article, I would be a photographer-collector rather than an artist-exhibiter.
References to images
- fig 1 no attribution Pinterest
- fig 2 Drains 1 (no attribution in Pinterest)
- fig 3 Yiannis Krikis Photography loop / oktober2004- september 2005
- fig 4 Duane Michals,Chance Meeting 1970
- fig 5 saved as a collection of images on Pnterest made of or a copy of the idea by Miguel Vallinas’ fashionably dressed flowers series
- fig 6 Physogs : https://flashbak.com/physogs-the-print-out-and-play-photofit-game-for-crime-families-1930-381163/
