Love/not photo1 dyp/triptic

as these images were shot on my SLR i had to redo the calculations for a dyptic, as well as doing on for a triptic to create them using the first images from my love/not photoshoots. The photos were as followed:

 

The only triptic i chose to do with these images was this one, showing the different stages of 'picking' while this does look rather nice, it doesnt really make a statement on the superstition, it mearly, and obviously shows the leaves being picked. Also with this idea with repetition within these images, that unlike the images of the pavement  while looking similar also dont need to be identical, my comment here would be that because they have moved slightly and the position of the camera has moved it looks slightly off, not off enough to look like its ment to be, but just about enough to be noticed.

 Here i wanted to change from the idea of an identical repetition, instead using one image of the bunch of flowers to be the 'loveme' as if to say the flowers were recieved as a sign of affection. while the second image is a contrast in a sence that the first image had a range of colours and textures and looks rather busy and the second image is just a small pile of crushed up dry leaves, to suggest the death of the flower and to show the section of the 'loves me not'

 Here i wanted the images to be similar with a slight difference, the 'loves you' part are the petals and leaves from the rose as they were alive, while the second part contrasts that as the dead dried leaves and petals. It shows a contrast while still being related together. the fact that the images are not 100% identical in focal length doesnt really matter here as the images are of different objects.

Finally this image was more just a play with the idea, using the dead leaves still to repesent the 'loves me not' selection with the heart suggesting love made from the leaves of a big daisy (typically the flower used for this) 

As  i stated before, theses images while not the best do work rather well as multiple images, it does make me think that i'm not really making the statement. I need to think of creating a less obvious way to show this. Its not really what i would view as a good representation as its rather literal, unless i look at the idea of giving of flowers? 

love/not photos1

With these images i just wanted to experiment to get an idea of what i wanted to do with these images or where i wanna take the idea of 'he loves me, he loves me not' and here are the images i ended up with, with the idea based around showing a relationship to love, showing the petals being removed, and dead/alive to represent the idea of a good or bad outcome. none of these images jump out to me but some are btter then others. and it will also allow me to experiment with dyptics abit more and how it will affect the images and the feel given to the audience. 

 

'He loves me/he loves me not'

This saying reminded me very much of sophie calles Exquisite pain to some extent with the comparison to two, one good, one bad or in calles case, before and after.

This is more an old wives tale rather then superstition. 

There always has been a link between flowers and love, romance and roses ect. As the old wives tale goes, you are to pick the petals of a plant and alternatively each one will mean if a love interest 'loves me' or 'loves me not' and as your left with a final petal that one corrisponds to if he does/doesnt love you ect. For this i didnt have much of an idea and jsut really got a bunch of flowers and decided to experiment which what imagery i would associate with the saying.

Dyptics crack/back photos 1

Here i was experimenting with the idea of multiple images and dyptics, in my notebook i have worked out the size of the 'canvus' to have two images side by side. I wanted to try them side by side, in a difference of mannors to experiment with the look of the images and the impact it has on its presentation. 

Heres a screenshot of how i created the structure of the dyptics using guides and rulers to measure out the different sections.  i thought i would include this as im not really used to creating multiple images and grids. its not something ive done alot of in the past. I also made sure that the left section fitted with the left shoe image and the right with the right shoe image as it were.

 

The first one i did i created using an equal boarder around each of the sides of the images. it created a very uniformed structure and looked very  well uniformed.  I also used images that are very similar types of pavement to create a look as if the image fits together. It almost looke like one image continued over two canves as it were.  This looks very straight forward and very well selected.

The second trial of the dyptics i did i used the same sized boarder around the edges but tripled the space in the middle to which is gives more space between the images. While this may work with other images, the idea that it almost sepourates the two images more, with a bigger distance, unlike the first you dont really get the idea that the  image is one split over two, and while that maybe good for other dyptics, i dont really think it gels as well as the previous image. Again here i use two images taken on the same surface which seems to fit so well.

This dyptic, i went back to the original use of the central partition and experimented adding a segment at the bottom, for if i wanted to add text or to give it a more polaroid theme. while i am still uncertain whether or not i want to experiement with the idea of using text in my work so far but may look into this later. i do like the idea, even if its just for a small experiment, and the space at the bottom is perfect for adding text, either typed or hand written.

The final images is going back to the original equal surround set up, however here i decided to try two images that the flooring dont really match to create a more jarring match.While this gives a different look and feel to the images compaired to the similar pairings of the other dypts however i actually like the look as it makes the images look more fractured and focuses more in on the lines in the images and the effects they create, i expesh like the contrast in this one between the single line in the left image to the over complicated patterns created by the lines in the right image.

'crack/back' photos 1

I went out and took some photos while walking of my shoes on cracks or seams of pavements as it fell/happened. this was only a small percent of what i actually stepped on. 

I tried to repeat the process so alot of the images are very similar with only the lighting (dependent on the location) as well as the floor itself. I like this idea that there is a constant against the veriable and it adds dimention to the images. And while they are simple images, im sure they will be more powerful as dyptics or grids, after all the idea i am trying to portray is that there are cracks/broken pavements/roads everywhere that it would be impossible to miss. I also tried to capture a selection of different paths, playing with the idea of lines and texture in the images. I also wanted to try and get alternative feet 'left' then a 'right' because i feel if it was all the same foot it would look weird? unless thats what i was going for?! while the quality is not to bad i'd like to reshoot with my slr, or even just a compact with a higher resolution and better sensor then my phone. I'd also like to experiemtn with maybe different shoes, different weather (rain on the floor, dry, frost, snow?) to see how that effects the images.

i think my next experiment will be to see how it looks as a group of images setting it up as a dyptic certacy of photoshop!

Step on a crack break your mothers back

This is a mix between an old wives tale and a superstitiona and this is another superstition that i had ideas for.

the idea of stepping on a crack in the pavement can cause your mothers back to be broken is highly impossible. believe it or not, the original myth of stepping on cracks didn’t have to do with breaking a mother’s back at all. Instead, it was more meaningful to children, as a warning of sorts. As to how effective this warning was, I can’t say. It originated some time in the 20th century and went a little something like this: when children walked over the cracks in the sidewalk they would meet up with these bears on a street corner. Once met, the bears would commence eating the children alive.over time this superstition morphed into the rhyme we know today: “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”. No one seems to agree on why it changed into this, perhaps just because it rhymed. Some say though, that in the last couple decades the superstition changed so that for every crack that was stepped on, it would correspond to the number of bones that would be broken in your mother’s body.

The idea that bones in the body will be broken due to something as simple as walking on a crack in the road. Its near impossible to walk normally and dodge the seams of the pavements but with the roads and pavements as it is its near impossible to walk anywhere without loosing track of all the seams and breaksin the pavements that you step on. 

As a little experiment i did a little tally while i was out and i just gave up countingin the end. The amount was stupid. I took a small video clip on my phone to start off with, its nothing amazing but its something to kick-start me.

 

My next idea is to create a grid or a  sequence, i said before that i wanted to encorperate dyptics or tyrptics or even multiples grids into this work and so i want to experiment with this idea, i think dyptics of photos of feet on cracks would work well... one left and one right? but i will experiment with this later.

narrowing my ideas

after my failed attempt at the idea of touching wood, ive decideed that the idea of suspersistions is so vast that i want to narrow it down so i can develop the ideas i have within this. 

so far ive looked at the idea of 'knock/touching wood'  and while im going to explore a little deeper into this idea i dont think visually it may be as visual as some of my ideas for other supersitions. 

i've picked a selection of 5 strong superstitions that i can explore and maybe later develop into more superstitions.

• 'step on a crack, break your mother's back'
• Dont open an umbrella inside.
• 'he loves me' 'he loves me not'
• break a mirror 7years bad luck
• shoes on a table brings badluck. 

Asa Andersson

Asa Andersson works across image-making, writing and art teaching. She has an interest in site-responsive art practices and multi-disciplinary creative approaches in relation to text, photography, film and print.  She classes her work as Poetic-photography.

I discovered her work in the book 'Shifting Horizons' which looks into female landscape photography. I decided that she was approapriate to my work as she doesnt as such photograph landscapes but has a mix of text and imagery in an unusal way, her images that ive seen in this collection are all macros or close ups, playing with depth of feild and it creates an usual image, almost abstract in a sence. While the photos are of nothing overly pretty they are very asteticly pleasing. and i think the depth of feild and the textures and way the images are shot add to this. sadly i cant find much else about this photographer except that she lives in stockholm but also is an associative lecturer here in the UK. It does make my reserch alot more difficult when the photographers dont have websites ect or there isnt alot of text based around them.

Elina Brotherus- Le' Miror

While looking at Brotherus for my other project i noticed her images Le'miror a collection of photographs taken to go along side her video of the same title. 

The images depict Broutherus (as she often works in self portrature) reflected in the bathroom mirror as the steam from a bath or shower disappears to show more of her looking in the mirror. While this has not alot to do with what ive been looking at of late, i was thinking of going into multiples and grids with my images, either the likes of a large grid of images of a similar time or dyptics or tryptics of images. So when i noticed that she uses multiples this is what made me stop and look at this. However the idea of the use of a mirror is interesting due to the idea of the superstition of 7years bad luck if your to break a mirror.

While the image is very straight forward and very simple in construction with the over the shoulder camera positioning and the stragicially placed toothbrushes, its the repition that makes this squence interesting, and just how we stat to see more and more thats revealed, almost as if to say, the more u see yourself the more is revealed. I also like that everything remains the same except the one thing, the mirror.  which is something i like the idea of, repition.

Jorma Puranen

While looking through portphio i found the work of Jorma Puranen. The photographer Jorma Puranen has been working in Lapland for years, so when he found a dusty box of 19th-century images of the Sámi in an archive in Paris, he decided to take them back to their native land in what he calls an imaginary homecoming. He worked overlaping images like i experiemented with with the idea of touching wood. his work is stunning, the mix of history and culture and the nature and feel of the place. Some of his images he uses text on signs in the landscape rather then using text externally like sophie calle. 
he uses light very well and his images overlaying or psycical transparisys of the images work well in contrast to the snow covered landscapes. 

Sophie Calle

As so far i am really keen on the idea of multiple images, and or playing with the idea of text and images, and while i cant seem to find many on superstitions.

My first thought on multiple images or text was Sophie Calle.

Sophie Calle is a french photographer, instillation artist and writer. 

Looking into some of her work i see alot of different techniques and different experimentations.

Her book 'Exquisite pain'  Follows a conceptual documenty approach to her journey though japan, and a journey through pain. 

"i left for japan on october 25, 1984, unsupecting that this day would mark the beginning of the 92 day countdown to the end of a love affair. Nothing extraordinary- but to me, at the time, the unhappiest moment in my life, and one for which i blamed that trip itself. I got back from France on january 28, 1985, from that moment whenever people asked me how it went, i chose to skip the Far East bit and tell them about suffering instead. In return i started asking both friends and chance encounters: 'when did you suffer most?'- i decided to continue such exchanged until i had got over my pain by compairing it with other people or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.'

The book starts of a collection of images she took while traveling and away in Japan accompanied by text taken from letters sent or photos of letters recived along side her own work, its a collection and documentry. however each image has stamped on it a day, a count down to this big 'event' she classes as 'unhappyness' the day in which her lover ends it with her. Here it adds a new dimention to the images, while we know that while she seems to be enjoying the experiences that she has the reader is always aware that this big event is coming that will make her unhappy and even voids or makes you sort of miss the connection to the images in some way. As well, the addition of the letters and text makes the seemingly mundane images of some of the photos another dimention. Once we reach the 'D-DAY' as it is, the book changes slightly. one page contains the image on 'the day of unhappyness' at the top section and under it we have a peice that she wrote about that day, the number attached goes up as if 'days after' and the right hand page contains text from a number of different people about there suffering.  as the days go on the text that calle wrote about her sufforing becomes transparent and the text slowly disappears as to suggest that her sufforing was fading away to nothing. Even the contents of this book is interesting and uses a grid like set up with thumbnails.
I love calles use of repetition and the way she uses it to compair to the stage in which she was oblivious to the inpending sadness.

this unusal stance is great for my work and explores different ways for me to connect images, and use repetition in an unusal way. it also shows me a not so obvious way to use text, often the text would contrast the images. 

I also like the repetition in some of her other works. In her book 'M'as-tuvue'  she has a section classed as 'games and ceremonies' which features repetition heavily.  
These selections of fun photographic games and ceremonies included images of repatitious graves. instillations of her birthday ritual, and most interestingly she had a friend set her rules of what she had to do in specific cercomstances, instruction to her life as it were, and which she documented. This i really like. the documentation of a specific idea or concept is what i really like about this. its something different, and when i struggle sometime for inspiration it maybe a good idea to take part in some sort of photography game like this? Some of the other games she took part in were relatied to a book her friend wrote in which the character maria was based on her, she did a few projects based on what 'maria' was like and did, and tried to copy it, this is where her images of the 'chromatic diet' came from. 

many of sophie calles little projects are very inspirational to me. And i just love some of the ideas ive got from her work.

starting point 'knock on wood'

i thought the best way to get into this was to start get past this block ive been having and get into making work again, so i started with the idea of 'touching wood' meaning good luck.

Knocking on wood, and the spoken expression "knock on wood," are used to express a desire to avoid "tempting fate" after making some boast or speaking of one's own death. In the United Kingdom, Egypt, Ireland, India and Australia, the term "touch wood" is used.

The meaning of such expressions is that the spoken words or thinking are only hypothetical and are not really wished to happen, so everything may not really happen but fell in a stone or in a piece of wood.

i started off by taking images of my hands touching woodern serfaces on my DSLR. Tables mainly as they are normally varnished rather then painted wood ect. theyre not amazing photographs, i used it on macro so i can play with depth of field and such and just get a feel for it, and really just getting back into the swing of it. 

photos #1

Out of all of them the last is most interesting, more for the angle, the addition of more of the background, and the detailing on the table. the others are good but all a little two similar. The lighting and whitebalence has clearly changed within the locations and this is something i will have to be weary of next set of images that i complete. Also the colour and such of the tables change and look different. Maybe insted of the same hand i could use others? a mix of surfaces and people. However i really do like the depth of feild and playing with it to some extent. i also like the way the texture of the skin reflects the texture and grain of the wood. 
I also tried experimenting converting the images to black and white to see the effect it has on the images and how it would bring the images together. 

these images do seem to fit better together then the colour versions, but i dont know if thats just because you cant notice as much the difference between the images expesh with the whitebalance difference not being so obvious. 

another experiment i tried with these photos was to create a double or triple exposure by overlaying them on photoshop to give the impression of movement to see if that would work or how it would look

while  in some ways this works, it gives a ghost like effect and hints at movement which u dont get in the images before. but i dont know if its really relievent? 

what am i trying to say about this idea of knocking on wood? or touching wood and its relationship with modern day? 

The contemp trip

We did a trip to the contempery in nottingham as part of the British Art show 7. while there wasnt alot of photography or video there it was very interesting to get an idea of instillations and the workings of it. I found it very interesting comeing from an artistic background.  I didnt find much useful or relivent work to my project on superstitions but it was a great eye opener and a great sourse of reference. it kinda reminded me that i can look at art as well as film and photography!

Superstitions reserch

As part of my reserch, in my notebook ive managed to get some people i know to write me down as many superstitions they can think of, of know of to try and get more ideas of what people are told. im also gonna ask people from different generations to see if this verys at all. I want to get an idea of how in the minds of people some of them are, while others have sort of faded into nothing as they become less relivent. This is what im looking at, representing superstinions in modern situations as well as looking at represenation of an idea through a more unusal way or a more conceptual manner, and i think by getting social interaction feed back ill be able to push my ideas forward. 

update** 
so far ive managed to get a few people to do this, and they seem to have rather alot of the more well known superstitions in common. I think if i carry on with this i will be able to find some unusual ones but also get to know which ones are more commonly known

superstitions in photography- Ansley west

Ive actually found it rather difficult to find photographers that has looked at superstitions and old wives tales, so far the only one ive been able to find is the work of Ansley West. In her work shes used a very conceptual approach to her work. Ansley West is fine art photographer from Atlanta, Georgia. She received her BFA in photography from the University of Georgia. Her art interprets narratives both real and speculative through her compositions, often using herself to recontextualize those stories.
Her superstitions project are a collection of images that are in triptyics and while she uses text her images are very conceptual and i really think some are stunning visually. 

The images are often related to the idea and obviously set up, while some looks candid and documentry style, they have been created in that way and i really like this. This idea of a mix between documentry and conceptual is something i want to look into my work. I love her use of colour, and how maybe one image maybe suggestive of the superstitions while the other two are not as obvious or always so related. i dont really like the text, but it does help to make the connection between the images and the basis of the work. 
I also love the idea of a dyptic or even more so a grid effect for some of the images, i think it would work better with some of the images more then others which i think stand alone images would look better, but i guess with experimentation i could see what works best!

The ring

The ring is a horror film based around the idea of a video tape that u watch will kill u in 7days. The plot is about a woman finding out what happened when her neice is killed, and finds the legendry tape. The random mix of images and sounds makes no sence, but once over the phone will be rung and u will be told that u have '7days' the only way to stop it is to make a copy of the tape, and we see how and why the tape was create and the history of the mysterious girl in the video. 

 The bit that interested me was in the first section of the film in which we see two teenage girls discussing the legend of the tape, and not realising the truth in it watches it. 

 The idea that the tape follows a set pattern of what happens. idea that a video tape can cause ur death falls into the idea of superstition and unless u copy it, no matter what you do you will die.

Even though im not what im wanting to do a horror film but finding it hard to look at anything else thats done on superstitions.

Urban Legends collection

The urban legends collections is a group of teen horror/slasher movie to which the deaths surrounding the main character is based on famous 'urban legends' The main film,  or the original urban legends film the plot revolves around the idea of revenge by killing everyone surrounding the main characture by using horrific 'urban legends' Urban legends  urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories usually believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's veracity, but merely that it is in circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it. everyone has heard these storys and pass them on as if they know someone whos actually seen/had it done to them, when really it has just been passed around and made to be truth. The plot is a very good twist on the idea of urban legends was just something interesting to look at for this idea.