A City in the Mind - Peter Fraser

Portraits come in many forms, however what would we expect a portriat of a city to look like? 
Peter Fraser - A city in the Mind, has addressed this idea with inspiration from the Vintage Classic, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. 

Peter Fraser - A city in the Mind Exhabition at the 

Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery 

Invisible cities, being a collection of short chapters where by Marco Polo shares his travels and stories with the Emperor Kublai Khan, however the langue barrier between the two men means that Polo uses objects to help tell his stories. 
It is not only that this book was an inspiration to Fraser's work that makes it important it is that idea that, images are language - A picture paints a thousand words. 

With this in mind Fraser has asked us to look at this work and allow us as the viewer to make up our own mind about what city or place he is trying to describe to us, although we know that this is a portrayal of London we still might find that some of the works, might evoke a memory of another city that we might have been to before. Such an image to do this would be the conch shell. 

In some ways this body of work could be seen as the blue print for a city, a city that is in the process of being built. Each image could be seen at the building blocks for a functioning city, for example the first image we see is of a song thrush, this being the adding of nature to the city. Moving on form this image we come across the image of the model city, a representation of people with in a functioning city, again the image Who's Who is again could be read as the adding of people to a city being built. 
As we move through the images we can start to see more objects that we would associate with civilized live such as chairs and chandeliers, however back track a tiny way and we can see representation's of a city thought the stacked playing cards making a tower, much like that of a skyscraper of a city such as London.

Peter Fraser - A city in the Mind Exhibition 

at the Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery 

Over all this body of work is thought provoking, allowing the viewer to understand the different ways in which a city can be seen though different eyes, other than our own. Allowing our judgements of a city to be brushed aside and see a city in a new light.      

Edward Burtynsky - Oil

Oil, one of the most essential raw materials known to man, one that we use in everyday life and don't even realise. In our modern day and age we are using more and more oil to keep up to speed with the growing economy of our planet. 
Edward Burtynsky's Oil exhibition at the London Photographers Gallery addresses these issues through his images of the life cycle of oil. 

Oil Fields #19a - 

Belridge, California, USA, 2003 

This vast body of work has been in the making for nearly twenty years allowing Burtynsky to travel the world finding areas rich in oil that are being pushed to the very limit. 
The show its self was split up into three of the four sections, these were Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture and The End of Oil. 

As we move through this large body of work we are taken through the stages of oil and its life cycle. However in what way are we viewing this? Most would see this as a life to death progression, but in some ways it could be seen as a death to life story as well. 
In the words of Barthes "The Greeks entered into death backward: what they had before them was their past" 
The relevance that this has to this body of work is the idea is the idea that the use of oil is a circle, what is before the oil is its past as well as its future, as eventually it circles back around. 
Although with this in mind we might need to, once again look at Barthes Camera Lucida, and again at the idea of death and photography. "Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is a catastrophe"   

Shipbreaking #13 -Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000

Polly Morgan - Endless Plains

Endless Plains is Polly Morgan's most recent body of work that includes a whole taxidermy deer, hollowed out and filled with bats. 
This body of work might look grim to some, however it is a reminder to us of the way that life and death works.

As humans it is easy to sometimes be seduced by nature's beauty, thus forgetting its power and control over our lives. In Morgan's body of work we are reminded that nature is not so kind. 
What makes this work disturbing is they way that life is depicted, it is not as if Morgan has frozen time, but more like she has taken control of time, setting up the Tableau of life and death. 

Polly Morgan, The Fall,  - All Visual Arts Gallery London

The Fall is prime example of the the circle of life, the fallen tree might have died, however it gives life back to the animals in the forest. As well as allowing fungi and mosses to grow on the trees's surface. However to complete this circle the fungi is killed and eaten by the birds that land on the fallen tree. Once more the words of Barthes come's to mind once more.

"Death is the harsh victory of the race, if the particular dies for the satisfaction of the universal"

Polly Morgan - All Visual Arts Gallery London

The Max Wigram Gallery is now hosting, till the 11th August six new hyper real paintings to blow you away. 
The work tilled cornered makes a highly contemporary body of work, by looking at these spaces with in the home White asks us to look at them in a different way, thus painting them to look like something that they are not. Not only do the images look hyper real, but White has used photographic techniques such as selective cropping to draw your eye to the subject in question. 

The sense of claustrophobia that some of the images allows the viewer to notice that the subjects in these images are not anything that special, however this allows the viewer to have more connection with the work. By creating images that show a 'real' space the viewer can then connect to the work or be more drawn to it. 

Each image has been hand painted onto aluminium, thus this is why there is a small section left unpainted at the bottom of each painting, the paintings have then be vanished and placed inside a large plastic box. Both these elements add to the shine and the reflection that you get on the surface of the images. Once more this adds to the photographic quality of the images, much like snapshots of a family home then printed as part of the album. 

Photography as Animated Art

Over the past 100 years the camera and the image have undergone huge changes, the biggest being the change over from film to digital. However bigger changes have begun to happen due to new technologies and the introduction of social networking sites and blog site such as Tumblr. The image can now be viewed by more people then ever before in one space, and now the image is becoming more clever. 

The image its self has never been a stand alone medium, but more a combination of many other arts. The Camera Obscura was originally a tool used to paint real time settings however this (on top of the chemical discovery) was the start of capturing the image. Although this might be the case we have to then look at the arts such a performance, when making an image we are conducting or capturing a performance of nature or setting one up with in a controlled space, which ever way we look at it there is a show happening in front of our lens each time. 

"Yet it is not by painting that photography touches art, but by theater"  - Barthes,R., 1982, Part One, Camera Lucida, London, Jonathan Cape, p. 31. 

The gif is a popular and now thanks to social networking sites such as Tumblr a very well known file format for images, the image simple hold data making a image act in a way a video would, the difference is that it is played over and over again in a loop. Once more this touches on the side of performance photography. 

The gif has now been used and abused, making it some what tacky and over used. In some ways the gif is past redeeming its self as as part of photography, its use for comedic and mick taking is now its soul purpose, but there is hope for image and performance to co-exist as one. 

The gif, however is now being challenged by a much more subtle performing image, with the new use of the iphone application. 

Now I hear you all scream out in despair, the iphone making images that are worth paying attention to, and I would have to agree, taking pictures on a phone is simple. 

The app its self is basic and the whole idea is as easy as taking a picture on your phone, however it bring together the subtlety of movement and image. The app allows you to take a short video but cut it down so only one part of the image moves. Thus creating a setting, a feeling of being a part of the setting, a different kind of atmosphere to that of the still image. 

So I will leave you with a few examples and let you make up your own minds, do you think there is hope for the Cinemagraph. 

Photography Meets Design

Commando Group (A group of people who specialize in visual identity, art direction, illustration and photography).

The objective of this project is to investigate the boundaries between photography and graphic design/illustration and hopefully produce something remarkable in the process. The original photographs were provided by photographer Damian Heinisch. - Tumblr 

The work produced by Heinish and the Commando Group has a strong fantasy feel linking it back to the idea if Kittelsen's work, however not only that the work has something else hidden away, something that is perhaps more apparent in Kittelsen's work. The strong element of darkness. On first inspection these creatures of the mountains are sweet, perhaps a child's illustration much like the Gruffalo. However when looking back at these images there is a fear of these creates some where in my mind,  the shear scale of them makes them feel powerful and domineering over the viewer. Image too is also an image that unnerves, the fact that the creature is crying. This emotion on a creature so big scares and questions, when that emotional what could something of that size do? 

Theodor Severin Kittelsen

However this work makes you feel you can see then creatures as defenders of the landscape. 

How The Face Changes With Shifting A Light Source

Sparkles and Wine - Teaser 

Lighting can easily be taken for granted, yet it is one of the most important things when it comes to any kind of visual art, whether that be photography, instillation or film. What makes this interesting is the effects that the light has on the face and the features, it allows us to see just what different light positions do to effect the face, the mood and the emotion of the image. However this video also uses colours to evoke more emotion on top of the lighting, this being something to bare in mind if you were trying out some of the lighting positions that have been used in this video. 

Colours will also change the mood, cold colours (such as blues, purples) making for a more vulnerable image while warmer colours (such as red, yellows, pinks oranges) making for a more aggressive or sexual appearance.