Light Harted

Aled Lewis 

I thought after my potentially heavy posts it was time to look at some thing a little light hatred. The work of Aled Lewis. Lewis is an illustrative graphic designer who has created designs for T-shirts and other products, much of his work is light hatred. 

The work that I will be looking at is his series called 'Toy Stories' where Lewis uses children's toys to create imaginative situations with accompanying captions.   

Much of the work is influenced by film and word play, as well as modern site such as ebay that we can all relate to. The work is really enjoyable to look at, its very refreshing and clever, that putting toys into certain positions can make up such funny narratives. 

Close to Home

Naoya Hatakeyama 

The series Slow Glass by Naoya Hatakeyma is a body of work that Hatakeyma created after a four month residents in Milton Keynes. While in the UK, he became interested in English rain. 

The work that was made was made just up the road from where I live now New Milton. He created the images by looking through windows where the rain had fallen, by keeping the rain drops in focus the town has been abstracted with the use of light and open New Forest roads.  

What I love about this work is that it doesn't show where in the town that the images are you would really have a hard time knowing that the images were taken in New Milton, so in a sense if you were to see this work in a gallery, having knowledge of the town, you would still not be able to make those links straight away. 

The work really looks at the way that water reacts when it falls upon different surfaces, such as glass. 

The name 'Slow Glass came from a name taken from the novel Light of other days by Bob Shaw. 

A Child's Mind

This post came to me after my bother made a sudden comment on an image that I turned to in the book Leg by Donna Karan. The image was of Kate Moss by Juergan Teller, 
The image shows only the backs of her legs, you can not see the rest of her at all, there is no indication of her facial expression or anything to tell us that she might or might not be dead. Here is the rest of what followed from me opening the page that caught my 8 year old brothers eye. 

Kate Moss - By Juergan Teller 

I want to talk about my brother and his reaction to this very image. As I was looking through the book for images to use for my self portraits of my legs my brother stopped me at this image and said to me 'That's a dead person', there was no question in his voice he knew just by the way that her legs were positioned and the way that the image had been cropped, so you were unable to see her face that this was a picture of a dead woman. 
I asked way he thought this as I knew that this was not a dead woman but an image of the famous model Kate Moss from the small print under the image. His response was 'cos they are lying on their front and if they were on their back they would be alive'.


Its fascinating how honest children are they have concept of time or death yet they can see and understand what death might look like, I guess you could say that the era that we live in has something to do with this, that children are more exposed to these kind of images, whether on the news or in TV and Film. 
But this might not necessarily be true. Through out our lives when growing up we must try to learn our way around the world and this is mainly done by images and what we see in the world around us. We have to try to understand the things we see, with the little amount of experience we have. Yet with what we do have we can begin to draw our conclusions on the world until we learn other wise. 


To prove this point  have a clip of John Bergers Ways of Seeing Program - Episode 4 
at 2:39 he discusses how child relate their own experiences to images.  

Ilovethatphoto - Maurizio Strippoli

Maurizio Strippoil is an Italian photographer that who looks at landscape in a minimal way, as you can see from the image that I have chosen to use. The work is influenced by the every day life and places rather then posed images.  

All the work the Strippoil's work is very minimal, clean and fresh. In some cases allowing the objects to almost float off the wall. 

The work that Strippoil creates is elegant as well as haunting, again there is an absence of people, but this time with in situations where you would expect to find people. In many ways this is more unsettling, creating the question, where are the people and why do they not appearer in the images. 







My Work:
The work that Strippoil has made is similar to the work that I have made. I am half Italian on my mothers side. My grandma is soon to be moving back to Italy to live with my aunts, therefore I chose to photograph her house and belongings (only the things that she has left now) and document a home that has been in the family for 28 years. 
The images we taken with 120 400 Iso colour film on a Mamiya RB67 Pro-S camera.  

The work is Titled Cioa Nonna and is a collection of images that look at the house that my grandparents bought a few years after they arrived in England in 1984,  the work really is a documentation of her life as well as self portraits of my self though her objects, objects that I have seen over and over again over the time I have been growing up and beaning like a second home over the past 20 years. 

The Arnolfini Gallery

The Arnolfini Gallery - Bristol 
Sophy Rickett - To the River 

The recent work of Sophy Rickett is a audio visual piece of work that is based on the natural occurring Seven Bore phenomena, however this is not a series of images documenting the Seven Bore but a video piece that looks more at the reactions of the spectators of this event. 

Thought out the audio visual work there are conversations record of the people with in the crowds, while this audio is played in the centre of the room three screens alternate between fragments of footage of people on a dark cold night waiting for the Seven Bore. The room that hosts the footage is dark, putting you into the situation of the people on the river bank. 
In order to understand this work  you need to stand and immerse your self within the conversations to pick out the different stories that are being told in the darkness. While in the exhibition you cant help but feel that you have been swallowed up into a different world, and that you have intruded on other peoples private lives. 

Why is it that when we are in the dark we feel as though the people around as can't hear us, just because we are been seen or viewing people we are aware of their eye contact, but once we are in the dark we loose this sense. Thus this makes the piece of work very intimate between viewer and participator in the video. 

On top of this, the experience is very intense, there is a feeling of pressure and tension on top of the anticipation of the spectators of the Seven Bore. The overlapping of the voices gives a very claustrophobic feel, almost as if the people are shouting at you all at once while you try to deciphered the codes in what they are saying to you. 

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/details/1235

The Art of Arrangement - The Holburne Museum

Still Life with Shellfish - 1650 - 1699 

Art of Arrangement: Photography and the Still Life Tradition

The tradition of still life is extensive, from painting to photography. This exhibition at The Holburne Museum in Bath aims to explore this transition from then until now. 
The show opens with one of the permanent collections still life painted pieces, Still Life with Shellfish. 
If we look at this image and study it we can begin to pick out areas of information that help to identify still life though photography. 
Still life will more often then not include fruit, this being a sign of wealth and power, however the pocket watch on the table show us that time is always at work and that all will die and rot away much like the wealth and power that is gained over time. It is a reminder to us all that life in any case, it not eternal. 

The Show
In this exhibition we are taken thought the ages of still life and are shown changes and the similarities that occur, The show includes many original prints by William Henry Fox Talbot, Harold Edgerton and Rodger Fenton.     

The images selected for this review best show the tradition, changes and similarities of the idea of still life. 

William Henry Fox Talbot, uses the tradition of fruit taken and inspired by the use of painting.  

William Henry Fox Talbot - Still Life

Rodger Fenton's Still Life with Ivory Tankard and Fruit again looks that the tradition of fruit and silver wear gathered elaborately on a table. This image once more speaks out about decay and the passing time that we all experience.

Roger Fenton - Still Life with Ivory Tankard and Fruit

Ian Beesley - Disused Block

The final image that I have included is Ian Beesley's images of the broken clocks, this image was taken in a Mill in Bradford, the image is showing the death of Textile industry, again the use of clocks showing the changes over time and how even industry comes to an end much like natural and organic objects do. 

This show was well put together, the transition between the past style of creating a still life image, composed of fruit clustered on a table to the idea of a more contemporary way of looking at how an image can be seen as a still life. 
A well worth show to have visited. 

Ilovethatphoto - Otto Kitchens

Otto Kitchens is a photographer for Atlanta, the work that he creates looks mostly at what we leave behind when we move on from place to place. Kitchens is mainly inspired by the world around us and not the people in the world. His work is more about what the people in the world leave. 
Kitchens works with many differernt forms of camera from DSLR, 35mm to Polaroid cameras. 

The work is often not perfect, Kitchens reasons for this is that life is not perfect so his pictures do not need to be. This concept is really very interesting, the idea of looking around abandoned buildings and photographing them to be perfect would be interesting but would they still have the same feel to them.
This images that I have used shows what Kitchens is try to achieve and what he has achieved, the images really give you the feeling that some one once was here, but now they have moved on. What I find really makes this image is the way that there is a very slight colour cast in the image of cyan making the image cold, but this works very well in getting the haunting feels across to the audience.  With the second image you can almost feel that presence of the many people that would have used these very seats. 

Decay is one of my interests to photograph, the idea of capturing something that has been left but did once have purpose or a memory. This work is such an inspiration to making more of my own work.