It's so delicious and moist.

The final fruit of my labours!Well… A mock-up, anyway. I took some digital snaps of my final prints to experiment with layouts in Photoshop and this is the presentation I went for in the end. I ended up making individual frames which can be slotted together to make the final crit board effect, since Virginie (my module leader) wouldn’t have been able to transport a full-sized frame to London. Although the prints aren’t absolutely perfect, my printing skills have come a long way since the first assignment. Got my final mark back for this project a few weeks ago (72) so definitely worth the hard work and sleep loss for the final push! Getting high marks in practical modules always seems so much more satisfying because it’s about the whole process, not just a final essay.Now, to resume normal service/silence on here..?

The final fruit of my labours!

Well… A mock-up, anyway. I took some digital snaps of my final prints to experiment with layouts in Photoshop and this is the presentation I went for in the end.

I ended up making individual frames which can be slotted together to make the final crit board effect, since Virginie (my module leader) wouldn’t have been able to transport a full-sized frame to London. Although the prints aren’t absolutely perfect, my printing skills have come a long way since the first assignment.

Got my final mark back for this project a few weeks ago (72) so definitely worth the hard work and sleep loss for the final push! Getting high marks in practical modules always seems so much more satisfying because it’s about the whole process, not just a final essay.

Now, to resume normal service/silence on here..?

Ah! An image like the one I described from the bathroom in my Uncle’s work office, with the dotted lines… Slightly more deconstructed than my rough sketch, but I think that this is a good thing.If my images were more uniform, I could have strung them together with wire like this… But I don’t think it would work very well! 

Ah! An image like the one I described from the bathroom in my Uncle’s work office, with the dotted lines… Slightly more deconstructed than my rough sketch, but I think that this is a good thing.

If my images were more uniform, I could have strung them together with wire like this… But I don’t think it would work very well! 

Inspiration #2 If only it were possible for me to print to a much larger scale… I keep thinking at a large scale when considering how to present my images! Frustrating… 

Inspiration #2

If only it were possible for me to print to a much larger scale… I keep thinking at a large scale when considering how to present my images! Frustrating… 

Architectural presentation inspiration #1I really like the use of the site plan instead of sky in this drawing, but I think it is definitely helped along by the drawing of the buildings being in colour and the plan in monochrome to show the difference. I think it would be too difficult to achieve an image from a small model with enough tonal difference to show a contrast from the linear site plan if I were to try and achieve this with combining photograph negatives/a negative with a photogram. 

Architectural presentation inspiration #1

I really like the use of the site plan instead of sky in this drawing, but I think it is definitely helped along by the drawing of the buildings being in colour and the plan in monochrome to show the difference. I think it would be too difficult to achieve an image from a small model with enough tonal difference to show a contrast from the linear site plan if I were to try and achieve this with combining photograph negatives/a negative with a photogram. 

Searching around the internet for architectural plans of skyscrapers, I stumbled across this image on madehow.com and was drawn to the sunflower-like cross-section. I then noticed the skeleton frame drawing with it’s interestingly splayed floor plans. Initially I had proposed to create a photogram using a single piece of tracing paper with a plan drawn on it similarly to an invitation on the wall in the bathroom of my Uncle’s Offices (he is a director at an architectural practice, the invitation to the building’s opening was an architectural drawing of a skyscraper which employed very interesting use of dotted lines… Sadly I don’t have an image of it, but it went something a little like the sketch below). Seeing the floors in this drawing made me consider two-point perspective, a drawing technique which I learned in Architecture school.

Searching around the internet for architectural plans of skyscrapers, I stumbled across this image on madehow.com and was drawn to the sunflower-like cross-section. I then noticed the skeleton frame drawing with it’s interestingly splayed floor plans. Initially I had proposed to create a photogram using a single piece of tracing paper with a plan drawn on it similarly to an invitation on the wall in the bathroom of my Uncle’s Offices (he is a director at an architectural practice, the invitation to the building’s opening was an architectural drawing of a skyscraper which employed very interesting use of dotted lines… Sadly I don’t have an image of it, but it went something a little like the sketch below). Seeing the floors in this drawing made me consider two-point perspective, a drawing technique which I learned in Architecture school.

Stacks (Tulips A8), Kunié Sugiura The interesting range of tonality within the mass of tulips is created by their stacking- the further away the tulip, the smaller its’ ability to stop light from reaching the surface of the photopaper. Although the image is still a chaotic splay of flowers and leaves, this effect enables the viewer to better make sense of the image.

Stacks (Tulips A8), Kunié Sugiura

The interesting range of tonality within the mass of tulips is created by their stacking- the further away the tulip, the smaller its’ ability to stop light from reaching the surface of the photopaper. Although the image is still a chaotic splay of flowers and leaves, this effect enables the viewer to better make sense of the image.

Exploration and discovery exam piece by George Townsend. After exploring the work of Markus Amm, George Townsend created this piece by digitally layering images of a black cardboard staircase on a white background, changing their opacity and inverting the colours.  An effect like this might possibly be achieved by using gradual layers of tracing paper in a photogram, exposing briefly after each new layer is added.  I could possibly use this in my ‘plan’ photogram.

Exploration and discovery exam piece by George Townsend. 

After exploring the work of Markus Amm, George Townsend created this piece by digitally layering images of a black cardboard staircase on a white background, changing their opacity and inverting the colours. 

An effect like this might possibly be achieved by using gradual layers of tracing paper in a photogram, exposing briefly after each new layer is added. 

I could possibly use this in my ‘plan’ photogram.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Excerpts from an interview with Bob Nickas for Interviewmagazine, 2011.

TILLMANS: I found photography to be a very powerful tool because as long as it looks real, it is perceived as real.That was the foundation for the style that I developed. I made extraordinary things look not particularly staged or extraordinary.

NICKAS: There’s a thread through all your work, which is a very basic question: “What else can a photograph be?” We see it with the Lighter series [ongoing series, which began in 2005]. The pictures are folded and creased, whether by accident or intentionally—they are about the physicality of a sheet of photographic paper. This goes back to your early decision to simply tape prints to the wall. The photo might be a carrier of great emotion, but it’s still a piece of paper. You insist on that reality.
TILLMANS: And that it has a sculptural presence. This was a surprise when I first showed the Lighter works. Even a taped photograph, which may only be a twentyfourth of an inch thick, always became an object that extended into space from the wall. And when there was a group of fifty pictures taped to the wall, they had a very spatial presence.
NICKAS: Your installations are so choreographed that walking into the gallery, we feel as if we’ve entered into a giant collage, an activated space. Your photos are pictures of things, but they are also objects.
TILLMANS: They are really color fields—color playing on a purely visual level. That’s why it’s interesting to do these installations where the actual narrative content is taken away and each picture only represents color. The Lighters, in particular, simply refuse to represent. Nor mally every photograph has the duty to represent. They just say, You’re looking at me

I like Tillman’s work- especially his abstract photographs which rather than presenting the viewer with content, ask the question of what the viewer brings to the image as the eye attempts to connect it with reality. 

What he says about photography as a medium making things appear real really appeals to my work with the ‘3-D photomontage’. My classmates are effectively fooled by these photographs and some are genuinely shocked to learn that the items and people are in fact made from flat cardboard! I think this proves there is some weight to what Tillmans says about the medium and how the viewer can interact with it.image

(Source: tillmans.co.uk)

Markus AmmFantastic photograms- the complexity of layering makes for very dynamic compositions that remind me of futurist paintings. It appears that the lights used to expose the paper have been held at angles, which might be hard to achieve in the darkroom unless I brought in a torch? 

Markus Amm

Fantastic photograms- the complexity of layering makes for very dynamic compositions that remind me of futurist paintings. It appears that the lights used to expose the paper have been held at angles, which might be hard to achieve in the darkroom unless I brought in a torch? 

Russell Moreton

I got a little bit excited when I thought that this artist was based in Canterbury! But alas, it seems he’s in Winchester having previously been based in Kent. 

His work is rather experimental to say the least… But I do like how his drawings interact with his photographs- not always in a directly obvious way. 

I hope to include a photogram which will be created by hand drawn tracing paper plans in my final submission, taking inspiration from Moreton’s work across various mediums including photography and photograms. It also illustrates the starting point for my brief to create a sense of the plan or ‘dream’ of the architect being realised in the world of modelling- the plan- in an interesting and photographic way.

Spectral Confluences: Architecture and Fashion #3, Russell Moreton

(Source: russellmoreton.blogspot.co.uk)