the last sad note before 2015

Why do most jobs that I want to apply too, require experience when in fact there graduate jobs.

How am I meant to get experience if no one will give me experience?

Not even like 3 months etc, talking about a good 2 - 3 years.

Applying to so many great opportunities and being turned down for all.

It's seriously making me question as to why I am now thousands of pounds in debt for a degree, in which I got a first in (I might add) for me to come out with no career on the horizon - AT ALL.

Fairest Of Them All

A predominant thread throughout my work is the idea of identity, through different passages I try to create pieces of a visual nature that an individual can watch and understand. My thoughts, feelings and questions always transpire into an idea that I try to put into a visual form. Through the use of film and words, a story can be told but it is up to the viewer how they receive it. I feel that in today’s society we are heavily reliant on the media, particularly film. The active audience theory suggests that we as audiences involve ourselves in what we are viewing and often make sense of the message by placing it within our own personal and social contexts. Eventually leading to the accepting of these ideologies as part of our own, moulding us into mass outcome of the media propaganda. We are told who we are without even knowing it.

Using this idea I try to create visual stimulus in a rather conceptual manner enabling the viewers to come to their own conclusion. Within my work I use a manipulated narrative, I create people to speak for me. To create a narrative allows us as viewers to understand a fictional character and find a way to relate. In my work I tend to use multiple subjects with different personas, to allow a viewer to choose to relate to one if not all if they want to. There are no names or background information, what you see is all you have. As a human being I am not trying to tackle a major media mess but as a young women I am trying to understand my place within society. My work attempts to vocalise how Generation Y has become infatuated­ with the idea of perfection and what we will do to achieve this.  Specifically, it shows the pressures placed upon young women and teenage girls from different groups of society, with the male sex having a greater influence.

My work is often self-therapeutic; it allows me to express my thoughts and ideas through visual stimulus. Like writing in a diary, I feel my projects allow me to grow as a person, gaining closure and answers. Film allows me to express my ideas on a larger platform due to the advantage of sound and movement. Creating a visual poem allows us to watch and listen simultaneously and gather a greater understanding.

When I create my work I do not aim for an audience alignment but rather an understanding of what I am trying to convey.

Hannah Hoch, Das Schone Madchen - 'The Beautiful Girl’

‘Das Schone Madchen’ which translates to ‘The Beautiful Girl’ in English, is a piece from dada artist Hannah Hoch and represents the coming of the new women in 1920’s Germany. A trademark piece from Hoch, this photomontage is layered with images from newspapers and magazines to depict the changing face of women with the ongoing growth of society through modernization.

 

1918, WW1 had ended and the roaring twenties were just around the corner, introducing new technology and the beginning of economic growth opened up a new opportunity for women. The collage is dressed with femininity and the possibility of hope for women. The background image is an advertisement for BMW, which dominates the collage with the blue gaining much eye attention against the neutral beiges and orange. The neutralization of the main colour; beige could indicate the equality that women could hope for, due to the colour not aligning with any gender.

Beyond the colours, a main point to discuss is that what is in the collage itself. As already established the collage contains overlaying images of metal with femininity. However the part that I was most drawn to when viewing this was the hair, a fashionable style of the time it stands out because it is the biggest image in the piece. The fact that it is coincidently placed above the woman in her bathing suite could insinuate the growing larger presence women could possibly have. The light bulb usually has connotations with bright ideas and by swapping the woman’s head with a bulb could indicate the ideas women have being made reality. Furthermore the woman in this brings forth the superficiality of women. The big hair is styled and the woman in the bathing suite represents the fashion of the time. It brings a realization that there is a false look on women, Hoch in this image is not complimenting that but bringing it to attention. A trademark move, Hoch usually removes faces and eyes of faces in her collages, I feel this is a way of stripping the personality and making it universal; for everyone to align too or have their own observations. I feel this collage overall screams the lack of identity that women had at this time in Germany, instead of being equal with men they were on a par with machines – invented by man. So in a way men own them and the superficial way Hoch has portrayed the women is the way men like to view women, beautiful and empty. The title ‘The Beautiful Girl’ is a major point within discussion, as there is no main girl to call beautiful, Hoch could in fact be aiming this at the machines as well, due to machines always being called ‘she’. This brings even more depth to the collage and the point she is trying to make.

I feel this collage is important as it is displaying so many things at once, women’s hope, men’s realities, Germanys industrialization and modernization and the lack of individuality and personality that is in a way insinuating that we are all products of the machine.

Thomas Ruff 'Blue Eyes'

An analytical discussion of how Thomas Ruff’s composite ‘Blue Eyes’ has created a new look into portraiture and how his approach and technicality has affected how a viewer aligns with his subjects.

Thomas Ruff’s combined photos tilted ‘Blue Eyes’ from the series ‘Portraits’ demonstrates how repetitive regimes and the lack of narrative image can impact on the viewer’s connection with the subject. Within this essay the passport like image will be placed within the context of the time and place it was produced as well as the discussion as to how the technicality and concept creates a lack of emotional effect and an indicates a mass loss of identity in today’s society. There will also be discussion of how Thomas Ruff’s manipulation of portraiture and the influences that have aided in the creation of the image ‘Blue Eyes’. Including reference to August Sander and Bernd and Hilla Becher.

German photographer Thomas Ruff (b.1958) studied at Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1977 – 1985 under Bernd and Hilla Becher. Ruff himself and fellow students including Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth ‘are often dubbed the ‘‘Düsseldorf School,’’ characterized by their shared, Becher-inspired analytic approach to their subject matter.’’This being the use of strict rules, repetitiveness and a typological technique kept when shooting series so every image is the same as the previous. Ruff’s long career has been defined by his repetitive technique and the way his approach creates significant series that explores the medium of photography.  This can be seen in the composite ‘Blue Eyes’ as it demonstrates all of these aspects in one image. Blue Eyes is a composite produced in 1991 as an extension of Ruff’s series Portraits that spanned 1981 – 1991. There are many points worth discussing when it comes to this composite as it has been looked at from numerous angles.

Whilst the discussion so far has been predominantly an introduction to Ruff and his approach, it is note worthy to mention how this piece can be seen as a somewhat scientific experiment. Ruff produces typological images of the same subject matter and places them next to each other in a comparable way; this is most evident in Blue Eyes due to the four sitters being put together. Although Ruff has stated that his work is not of an experimental nature and any outcome people perceive from his work is just ‘Collateral’. Ruff is continuously changing the medium in which he creates his pieces; from using found images in his series Jpegs to extending his older project, Portraits. From Portraits derived two further projects, the single composite Blue Eyes that will be discussed in depth and Andere Portraits, which translates as ‘other portraits’. These two projects go hand in hand as they are using previous portrait photos and manipulating them. At first gaze it is the assumption that Ruff is using the sitters as variables within this ‘experiment’ of different people and that the blue eyes are what connects these ‘strangers’ together. However the major point is that Ruff has altered the iris on each of subjects to bright blue. Since then, Ruff has not spoken about why he changed there eyes, however one can assume from an interview about ‘Andere Portraits’ is that he wanted to create a new human, he wanted to manipulate his viewers into thinking that these sitters were placed in the composite and it was tilted ‘Blue Eyes’ because they genuinely have blue eyes, however they don’t. Furthermore it has been stated that in fact he altered more than four portraits ‘he replaced the dark eyes in twelve of his earlier portraits with blue ones, subverting the authenticity of his own photographs.’ It is here again that we can assume that it is a type of a scientific experiment because it is possible he only released the portraits he liked the outcome of. The blue eye manipulation some how masks these sitters, and puts them into a type of inexistence.  Although it’s not only the eyes that are seen within this composite, we do see four humans, who have eyes, ears and a nose like the rest of us. But this leads us to the next point of discussion; who are the people within these portraits?

First of all it shows 4 Portraits; two of young woman and two of young men aged 24 – 34. Each gender is placed next to the opposite, which creates a symmetrical satisfaction for the viewer. The sitters within the photo are positioned in the same way; each one in front of a white background, there head and shoulders facing towards the camera with eyes looking straight into the lens, engaging the viewer. There is a type of formality that comes with these Portraits, the sitters do not look at ease, and they’re positioned up straight, leading to a lack of character as they are all sitting the same way, bringing a form of unity.  These images are very much surface based and do not show any depth. We are looking at these people as outsiders peering in, seeking a way in. If we begin with the two male portraits, we can see that these two men differentiate from each other. There skin tones are extremely different however the main point that distinguishes these two men apart is how they choose to represent themselves. The top left man chooses to have his hair short and wear a smart shirt, where as the man in the bottom right portrait has a more relaxed style, his hair is slightly longer and he has chosen to wear a jumper that’s slightly creased. At first glance these two men are completely different, the only thing they have in common is that they’re both placed next to each other and could roughly be the same age. However when we look at the two women, they look reasonably similar, although they do have completely different hair colours and skin tones it seems to be that they represent the fashion of the time they were shot, they are wearing similar types of loose fitting shirts that are of neutral tones and their hair is of the same length.  Although we can see who these people are and there dress sense it tells us nothing of their personality but creates a type of non-existent relation, that all these people are still physical beings. As stated by Giorgio Verzotti in the book, Thomas Ruff written by himself and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ‘‘More Precisely the intention of these portraits is not to stress distinctive individual features, but conversely to bring out the anonymous, generic, qualities that each one embodies’’

Portraiture is defined as displaying the expression, personality and mood of a subject. ‘Blue Eyes’ illustrates none of these characteristics, so why are they still classed as portraits? We do not receive any information about the sitters, which is odd due to portraits meaning to be a representation of ones self and therefore we as the viewer are unable to receive closure from Blue Eyes.

The composite is a large format print – in fact one of his last portrait prints, due to the paper being discontinued in 1991 and it has given us no indication as to who these people are, no form of recognition we can find ourselves aligning with. These portraits were created to be placed on a wall, which leads to another point on Ruff’s anti-recognition. By looking at the image, we are typically standing in front of it. Their eyes align with ours. However in these images we are not able to recognise ourselves with them, disabling any sympathetic or emotional meaning to come from it.  Ruff states ‘‘I also wanted to indicate that the viewer is not face-to-face with a real person. Quite often people at exhibitions, ‘Oh that’s Heinz, that’s Peter, that’s Petra’, because they’re looking through the photograph, confusing he medium with reality. By blowing the portraits up to a colossal scale, I forced the viewer to realise that he is not standing in front of Heinz, but in front of a photograph of Heinz’’

Furthermore the fact that these experiments were created after the project of ‘Portraits’ was completed allows us to think that Ruff still wasn’t satisfied with the outcome he had been receiving. Ruff specifically asked his sitters not to show emotion. As Tobias Ostrander, author of the book Thomas Ruff: Identificaciones stated in ‘‘the faces of each participant are devoid of any significant expression’’ and ‘‘these portraits gain a uniformity, which diminishes the individual characteristics of each person portrayed’’. Blue Eyes is a flat image, its all about the surface, what you see is what you get, there is no depth or hidden meaning or underlining narrative. But naturally as a human we seek for meaning, so when looking at these images we still wonder what are these people saying through their eyes, their body language, their wardrobe, what are they thinking?

But at the same time, ‘Blue Eyes’ is still relevant within the portraiture aspect because these sitters are still representing who they are, Ruff knew his sitters; they were either friends or acquaintances that he asked to photograph because he wanted to use people who represented the time they were made. ‘‘I made portraits of my friends. I was interested in making series of contemporary portraits of young people what would reflect present times in the western, industrialized world of the twentieth century’’6 and ‘‘Resist the photographic gaze of a surveillance society by being almost expressionless’’7. They were also wearing there own clothes, this leads to the point of self representation which is part of portraiture, they were representing who they are by how they dress themselves, despite the fact that they do not have any facial expressions. This has been a main vocal point when discussing Ruff’s portraits, ‘They have no memory. They are mute and drained of affect. His works speak of a contemporary subjectivity defined by amnesia – unable to process and connect the various mnemonically embedded images in order to create a deep and layered holistic sense of knowledge’’Ruff has stated that he simply aimed to capture the look of ‘his generation’, Socially if Ruff is representing his generation, what is his generation indicating? Again the way he has positioned his sitters, indicates how his generation were beginning to loose their identity. ‘‘Most of the photos we come across today aren’t really authentic anymore, they have the authenticity of a manipulated and prearranged reality'’. It is here that we begin to understand why Ruff has manipulated his photos, we still don’t understand why he manipulated the eyes, but we can begin to get a sense of the form of manipulation in its greatest form, to perfect the human body.

Another reason he may have used sitters to reflect his age and his generation is in a comparable way to previous generations, which again could lead to the idea of an experiment Ruff is conducting. However in some ways it can be that he is following on from fellow German photographer and a primary influence August Sander’s work and just adapting to the reality that has time as past so has peoples status’ within society. Sander began shooting portraits of people from 1910 and is renowned for them. His portraits depicted a wide range of different people, including farmers, students, politicians etc, in there own environment with there ‘own’ people, indicating a social status that Germany had. It is Sanders work that is the exact definition of portraiture and dates back as far back to B.C. Its historical purpose usually depicted the rich and powerful.  Ruff has even stated himself that he aimed to create these portraits in reflection of 1920’s portrait photography. ‘‘Sharp, objective photographs in the tradition of the objective photography of the 1920’s’’6. However now day’s portraits are much easier to create due to the development of technology. This leads to another point of the composite Blue Eyes in which can be applied, the development of technology. First of all it aided Ruff in being able to choose a colour of the eyes of his sitters, but further more could insinuate a more prominent point in the time, in which the perfect human was beginning to be more dominant within society.

These were large format prints, which allowed us to see every open paw, every stray strand of hair. This could somewhat highlight a divide in the way we see the image, although we are not receiving a personal connection due to the lack of expression and narrative, we feel the alignment through the features they have, we know what its like to have a spot, or in need of a hair appointment etc. He is representing real people of ‘his generation’. But altering them so they are not real people at all, they are a fabrication, a creation of his own. Much like today where the majority of advertisements have been altered to represent absolute perfection.

It’s at this point we are able to discuss Ruffs technical manipulation towards this image, although he has altered the subjects within the portraits, the way he has displayed the image aids in the respect of the mass uniformity he could be trying to uncover. The portraits are set out differently from his previous series. Instead of one on there own placed next to each other on a wall on large prints. These four images have been put together to create a type of ‘super’ image. This image has been produced as four portrait composite, however it reflects the style of a photo booth in which you would get identification photos done. This supports the theory of the mass identity that could be received from this image, as when we have these photos taken, we get four copies of the same image. Therefore this format is replicating that but instead of four copies of one image, we receive four different images of four different people, but still using the same format, meaning that all these people could possibly be representing the same person. Leading to the lack of individuality, but also the idea that the more and more the western world advances, the more identification and proof we need to in fact exist. It is here again that we see that Ruff has steered away from the archaic forms of portraiture in these portraits, due to the surroundings not representing whom these people are, it again adds to the absence of personality. All we have to go on is by the way they are staring not at us but straight through us. And even when we as the viewer have moved away from the image, the portraits will still be looking straightforward into nothing. That is what leads to the lack of emotional response, because although portraits have often been thought of capturing the soul, or pieces of the soul. This composite shows no soul just surface.

So far the discussion has been on Ruff’s approach towards capturing the images. However the question to ask now is why? Why did Ruff change all his sitters irises to blue, what was he trying to convey? First of all we don’t know why he chose these particular sitters out of all the portraits he had, second of all we don’t know why he changed the colour of their eyes to blue. One can assume that he chose blue because people perceive blue eyes as beauty and perfection and could even derive from Nazi Germany Aryan race. In the 1930s the Nazi’s actually banned Sander’s portraits as they did not reflect the ideal Aryan type6, could this be a reason for Ruff manufacturing the perfect human. However another worthy point of discussion is that years after this composite was exhibited the advance in technology allows us to seek new meanings from it. For example, in 2008, 17 years after this composite was produced it was proven that every person with blue eyes comes from the same ancestor. So now could this photo have a new meaning, 17 years later? That these people could have possibly been related, if we hadn’t known that their blue eyes were fabricated.  Another point to consider is why did he distribute these four portraits and exhibit them, as a size of his previous individual portraits would be. They’re a few possibilities; by having the portraits millimetres between each other allows the viewers eyes to capture the difference and similarities between the sitters immediately. But at the same time it’s almost as if Ruff is throwing it in our face that we are meant to see a connection between these sitters, however again this leads to the idea of a mass identity and unity because we are looking for a connection and for all we know they could be strangers to each other.

Again like the 2008 investigation, the photos represent there time, which means viewers coming to look at the portraits now perhaps would not understand it the way viewers perhaps would have in 1991. For me now looking at this image, I interpret it as people from the 90’s, but why do I think that?  Not because I know the date but because of how they are represented, Ruff has succeeded in representing his generation, for now I am in a different generation and recognize that. Ian Brunskil stated ‘The people look like people we might know. This is not the case anymore; they look like people my parents might know. However the point is still there, it is still insistent. The eyes of these sitters see through you, they are not interested in capturing you; there is no underlining narrative or meaning. There a manufactured piece created by another person to deceive people of the honesty of photography, that it truly captures ones soul.  Since Ruff, there have been many photographers that tamper with the styles of portraiture and manipulate it to have a different meaning, however I feel that Ruff was one of the first to set this ‘sub genre’. He changed the way we perceive portraits, not only did he on some degree capture his sitters external appearance but was also able to place them within a society that were growing more and more dependent on the ability to be able to change who they are. But also that as people in an advancing world, we are constant consumers in need for answers and are always desperately trying to seek meaning. We are in awe of the rich, beautiful and powerful and are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to what we think will gain us higher recognition. So even though Ruff seeks to disconnect any emotional connection between his subjects and the viewers he allows us to be open to interpretation and for us to decide ourselves, the very one thing he is demonstrating a loss of, identity.

*note* this was an essay I wrote for my third year study of photography and video, documented copy has bibliography of all sources used. Because this study became such an aid in the progress of my work I thought I would add it to my blog. 

Deleting an email address - with your blog attached, idiot!

A four year old blog has been deleted, because I thought I was being hacked by someone in Argentina.

Turns out it was my Hola app for Netflix that was set to Argentina, I cant remember what I was watching for it to be set to Argentina, but it was.

Therefore to protect my online identity I deleted an email account that had all my blogs attached.

I was going to name this new blog as Thoughts From An Idiot but unfortunately the title was taken.