Reflect & Research

What are the main written resources you have used to help you develop your work and ideas? List and give a brief summary of their relevance (publications/writers/articles/theories you have focused on over the past year): Utopia and dystopia – the ideas of perfect and imperfect world and landscapes. Desires that cannot exists, like the collaged landscapes I have created. The beauty and the sublime – what makes a place or a landscape so desirable and how the framing of a place can change how we see it. David Bate, Photography: The Key Concepts – the landscape chapter - this talks about the ideas behind the beauty and the sublime and how landscape photography can impact the way we see places Edge of a Dream, Utopia, Dystopia and contemporary Photography – The relationship between humans and nature and how we have changed nature to benefit our lifestyles. How we have made a lot of areas industrial but are now also trying to add natural elements back into our lives Utopia | Dystopia Constru

Outline your objective.    Where do you want to be?  (Don’t be vague or general.)   I want to be confident in my work and my ability to talk about my work, more specifically the context. I want to be able to tell people why I am doing what I am doing rather than just showing them my work. I also want to continue to develop my ideas and produce an outcome that I am really happy with. I want to explore digital modelling and also ways of combining photography and sculpture, both digitally and physically. I have started to do this but I want to do it at a higher level of quality.     Where are you now?   Right now I am starting to explore more options of how I can create and display work. I am focusing on both physical and digital ways of working and continuing to look into the ideas of photography and place. Right now I am enjoying using clay and I want to continue to use this as I move forward.     How I will you get to where you want to be? What will you do next? Outline 3-5 clear steps

My work is about place and building relationships between places. It is about bringing the idea of ‘paradise’ or the ‘perfect’ landscape into everyday life. Taking fragments of the places I have visited and turning them into a new place. They then become parts of a whole fragment. I have built relationships between the places in the images by placing the fragments next to each other. I have been finding ways to make these places exist in physical form as well as digitally. I have been adding depth to these flat images, because they are more than just fragments of locations placed together, they have now become their own landscape. To me each fragment of the image reminds me of a specific place and time, however other people may just see a landscape. The way they are presented either shows them as their individual fragments or as a whole fragment. This has been an exploration into bringing collaged landscapes to life.

 This text that I found online talks about photography and place again however this time it is from an Australian photography point of view. It talks both how the representation of a place is important to its history and context. The photographers have realised that as much as they wants to represent the place they must also represent the history. They have to respect the culture, the place they photograph needs to represent the history.  With landscape photography I think it is important that you are clear on what you are trying to achieve especially when you are looking into locations with lots of history.

This article I found talks about the exhibition You Are here, it is a brief history of photography and place. This article talks about photography relationship with place and how photographs of places allow us to not only remember and re-live memories but also experience places we haven't been before. It talks about how photography doesn't only represent the place captured but also the place it was created and the place it is represented. This builds a relationship between these places. They also talk about how photography shares and records fragments of the world. We tend to now visually understand places before we have visited them because of photography. We are now able to experience places without visiting them through photographs.

 January 23rd - April 4th 2004 This exhibition featured a number of artists who all explored the idea of place through photography. Photography allows people to capture places and moments in time. The theme of place allows people to take unconventional approaches to explore ideas. In this exhibition we see how different people explore the idea of place, some through exploring nature, others through exploring homes and other through history and archives. The idea of place isn't just geographical, it is about its history and the characteristics. It can be about telling a story and documenting. places can be associated with memories or personal histories as well as large events marked in history. I think the idea of place is much bigger than people realise and different places have different meanings to people. This is why the ideas of how people explore place differ, someone may want to look into the place where they were born where as someone else may look into the same place for a

 I'm trying to make my collages physical or look real They exist digitally but I want them to exist physically   Relationships between places fragments of places Making these new places tactile When they're on the clay they look like a fragment of a place, like a rock that's fallen off a cliff or a stone on a beach they're a small part of a whole

 It feels as though I have a few different types of work, but all of them are based around the collages. It feels as though the main point of my work was to explore how to present it. However I feel like recently this has changed slightly through using clay. In a way it feels to have become more about representing landscapes. When I first started this I was taking fragments of places and then putting them together to create a whole pice however I was then fragmenting them again to re present them as a whole landscape. Showing that there was a relationship between the sections but also showing that they were in fact fragments of places. With the plain clay piece that resembled a topographical map in a way, it felt like this still reflected the idea of representing landscapes and making new ones. All this was was a piece of clay moulded so it had depth and contours and different levels, by placing it within this project it gave it meaning. It gave it context. This then allows the viewer

 When I created the plain clay piece my intention was to somehow combine it with my collages, I tried this before by emulsion transfer and also projecting the images. Although these worked it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I have found a way that I think works really well. I took one of the isolated clay piece images and then layered the collage on top. After this I increased the saturation slightly on the collage and made the clay piece black and white whilst also increasing the contrast. I then lowered the opacity of the collage layer so that the clay piece was showing through. The contours and shadows added texture and depth to the collage. I then cut out around the shape of the clay piece. This was the first one I made, I didn't like the rough edges. I feel like this has added a new depth to the collages. it feels as though they have become tactile even though they are still digital. They feel less fragmented and more like an actual piece or place. This feels better than the

 I read this chapter about John Stezaker because he works with collage and although a lot of his work contains portraiture the chapter spoke about the relationships with the images and the fragments. It talks about how through collage we see something that isn't visible and that's what I am doing with my work, I am creating places that don't exist. Giving the viewer a chance to see something that isn't there. I am also buying relationships between the places in the collages by placing them next to or on top of each other to create a new scene. Taking fragments of places and turning them into something else.  This chapter also interested me because it talked about how collage goes against what photography is designed for. Photography captures moments in time and shows a particular place or person at a certain time. However with collage you are editing that and making the photograph not what it originally was. Taking the image, changing the context and it therefore no lon

 Nakanishis 'Layered Drawings' are some of my favourite pieces of work. To create these amazing pieces of work he will photograph and event such as a sunset over time - he will capture the process of the event. After this the photos are places onto transparent acrylic panels and hung up in chronological order. This creates an incredible experience. It looks like you are living and walking within the event. I think the size of the panels really helps to involve the audience and the way the audience can walk around and live through the event again and again, even if they weren't there originally. I think work that the viewer can live in is really interesting, you very much get lost on the work because you are surrounded by it. Being submerged into a past event. Another thing I like about Nakanishis work is the colours and the light. Because the photos are on clear acrylic the light can shine through the pieces and the colours get reflected and transferred onto the room around

 Luis Durado is an artist who works with collage and photo manipulation. He uses a mix of p=both physical and digital techniques, his work is surrealism and his photos feel like you're in a dream land. The main series of  his work I am interested in are called Departure, The Garden and Maps. Although I love his collages in his work Into Space, I think the other three series relate more to my work. In Departure Durado takes a landscape image and manipulates it. He takes a shape in the middle of the photo and rotates it so it is a different way round to the rest, he then repeats this process inside the area he has just rotated. In the end he is left with a muddled up landscape. I like these images because you can tell they are landscapes but you will never really know exactly what that landscape looks like. I like the way that he has only used one image and has come out with such a mesmerising image, he has almost created a collage of the image using only the image. In his series The

 Week 1 In week 1 we discussed materiality in photography -Photography and the Object -Photography and Installation  -Photography and the Archive -Photography and Digital Culture Week 2 In week 2 we were shown some presentations and asked to respond to one of the tutors ways of working. For me I found Sylvias way of working the most interesting. Week 3 This week we had to respond to one of the working methodologies in the last weeks presentation. My work for this week is in a different blog post. I responded to the idea of practising place. Week 4 This week we had to find an image by an artist and create a response to it. I picked an image by Sarah Eisenlohr and responded to that. The images and research are in previous blog posts. Week 5 This week we talked about how things that aren't photographic can inspire work, things like: objects, texts, facts, quotes and sculptures. For me I think text or quotes is something that can help inspire work, if someone else describes their relat

 With the images of the plain clay piece I took I digitally cut out the clay piece, leaving it on a transparent background. It looks really interesting taking these sculptures out of context again. The reason I did this originally is to create some new pieces however when isolating the clay piece I thought they looked really interesting on their own. I like the fact that this is a representation of a landscape without it looking exactly like a landscape. I think especially when the images are on their own they could be interpreted in lots of different ways. I like that there could be multiple meanings to these pieces but you don't know the proper meaning until you've seen the whole project. I think this is one of my favourite pieces in the project. I also really like them with a black background.