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!