Book research- Colin grey

Colin Gray began to take photographs of his parents in the 60s when he was 5 years old. At family occasions, holidays and celebrations Gray would be allowed one shot from the single roll of film in a square box Brownie Twin. Over the next three decades he has accumulated an extensive body of work documenting his parents loving, working, homemaking and playing.The book 'in sickness and in health' is the final body of work based around his parents. it shows the final deteriaton and finishes with the death of his mother.  This book is rather interesting as it almost in some way relates to my work. taking this theme of wedding vows and the idea of 'in sickness and in health' when we see the deteriation of his parents, and also the continuation which would be 'till death us do part' which ironically is how the book ends.

The front cover of this book is rather simplistic and very ponyant, as well as very respectful as its clear that what is inside is personal, it almost could look like a diary, and in a sence it is a photographic diary of the last few years of his parents lives.

 What i find rather interesting is that it does use imagery very well, but also the use of white space is good. With some simple pages are left blank with all but the text, it makes the audience focus on what is being said.

 Ironically Grey also uses mirrors, square crops as well as this idea of slight repetition in shapes or themes. which is highly like some of the factors that i have encorperated in my imagery.

 Most of greys images are laid out in the repetitious way of equal sized square cropped images opposing another. These images below, and many of the others in Greys book just go to show the emotion and impact that such a pairing could have.  each of his images are very well thought out and very well composed so the images compliment each other even if they are not similar in subject, such at the pairing below. where the images suggest the agony the mother is going through in comparison to a younger self. as well as this, he matches well the colours the pale pink of her skin and the colour of the wall paper, as well as the prominance of her wedding band in the portrait of her.

Book research- 'a star is born'

A star is born is a book that i have, it traces how stars on both sides of the camera shape the image of musicians and rock bands. Glamour portraits, journalistic documents of live performances and PR materials from record labels form the core of this publication. I know like most of these books it doesnt have alot to do with what subject matter i am doing but the style and presentation in the books is really what i am looking at more then anything else.

Below we see an example of the use of imagery with the accompanying essays in this book. rather then dotting the images all over the place they just place them in blocks as to keep the pages more tidy.  Ive not really thouight about essays or introductions to my book just yet, i really think an introduction may be best to the book as most photography based books have them.

 Below we see a good example of a gridded double spread. However the background is really naff with that awful gradient over it, i do like the effect of seeing so many images over 2 pages, and gives that great effect on the idea of repetition as well as giving the scale i wanted on some of my images.

 Theses images below are again a different take on the one big, one small image, this time the large image stretched across the two pages while the small image is rather alot smaller just fits nicely in the corner. as stated before i am very weary of a stretched image due to the nature of the books binding and loosing the image or part. This time there is text under both of the

 This again is another double page pull across but what interested me about this image was the shape and the sizing, when sizing image i dont think about covering 4/5ths of the page with the image, so far ive been thinking in terms of, all or nothing when it comes to sizing these images. but this has made me re-think my ideas of placement and sizing of my images.

Book research- Jim Dine

“I am an object maker.” Jim Dine Night Fields, Day Fields is a survey of Jim Dine’s sculpture from 1959 to 2009. Dine is commonly seen as a prolific painter, printmaker and photographer whose central practice is drawing, but this book shows that sculpture is just as important in his oeuvre.

 Here is a book based around photographs of  his sculptures entitled 'night feilds, day feilds.'  with some very interesting layout ideas for books.

 Here is a photograph of his work entitled 'green suit' i actually like the look of the thin image surrounded by alot of white space, accompanied by the paint based hand written title, although it does seem a little silly to repeate this title below, maybe just for the sake of being repeative in its format?   the use of text seems to reflect the paint covered clothes which i really like. this complete link between image and text.

 Here, he uses two full page images with the text hand wrote across the central partition of the page seams. Which while it looks good here, i think would be very troublesom when it comes to printing and u lose about a quater of an inch in the spine of the book. though the text placement is off, i do like the look of the text on an image with alot of space around the image and yet still in the photograph, if that makes sence. the white space is not created around the image frame but part of the image.

Here, while the layout is very basic, i like the close resemblance between the two images and how it links to my work looking at the use of repetition. and how the form would look on the page.

Book research- Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon photographed the faces of politics throughout his career and this book brings together his political portraits for the first time. Juxtaposing images of elite government, media, and labor officials with photographs of countercultural activists, writers and artists, and ordinary citizens caught up in national debates, it explores a five-decade taxonomy of politics and power by one of America’s best-known artists.

Here, once again its the simple, one photo on one page, one section of text on the next. which i like it is simple, and i think i will find it alot while looking at text and image in books.

  Similar to the other book i have looked at this also uses different sized images contrasted on a double spread. However here the allignment are central so the tops of the images are not matched together which is different. it also adds scale to the images in contrast to each other.

 Finally  this style is also abit different. it draws the image over onto the next page, making the image extend into the central partition and out onto the next page, which i have seen before in imagery but then it takes a specific kind of image to work really, as u will lose some of the image in the spine of the book.

Once again his layout is very simplistic in design, which i like and think is appropriate for my book.

Book research- Ray K Metzker

Light lines is a complete retrospective of the work of Ray K Metzker. this square shaped book has a collection of 200 black and white images in a range of shape and style rangeing over his work. Most of his double page spreads include one photo on each page accompanied with text. This book was very useful as it takes a mix of different style and shaped images and pairs them together in a way which looks visually good.

 Here, we seem the basic structure of the basic two portrait style images, which is the same for the landscapes. reflected in size and location with a basic gap and text underneith which is one of the basic outline and structure, that i would want.

 Here we see a simple one image double spread, using white space and the left page just for the simple text. here i like the fact that the text is alligned to the right, which is more unusual the only problem with that is being careful with the printing that u dont lose it down the central crease.

Here, more unusually, they have two square images but of different sizes, this is something that ive not yet concidered as it never really come to mind. it is something i can experiment with. the text is alligned the same on both pages and the images are alligned at the top too.

use of text

The selection i am making so far, the structure of the boo  and the use of text is something that yes it can be planned to some extent, however the final product will be alot down to my judgement when finally put together on the book creator.
so far the text has been on the back burner, i mean the only one i have really sorted out is the text for the first superstition: step on a crack break your mothers back, which can be seen in a previous blog post. But in this post i will discuss the impact and points i want to get across with the addition of the text.

the images for he loves me he loves me not, while i have organsied the text to some extent, i know what text i want either side of my images, but as the text is in french i feel more text would help to add to the audience to guess what superstition it is. The ideal would be summit that suggests the meaning of the french words used. maybe something along the lines of 'the difference between happiness and pain' ? or the same with ... held between a petal, refuring back to the superstition more.

The 'unlucky 13' superstition text is purely simple as its just the page numbering on the 13th page in the book. with the two imageson the double spread the day before.

The catch your cold text i wanted something not so obvious to what the superstition is, i wanted to associate the text and superstition but not something really obvious. i want something clever but not to over the top. My original idea would be listing the symptoms of the common cold, but i think that wouldnt look that good. Then my mind came to looking at the latin name for the common cold, as i thought the latin would look nice next to the grid of images focused more on the abstract, and as most people cant read latin, the words itself would be abstract. this i really like as an idea and will try out in my layout.

My ideas around the breaking of the mirrors image was all about the imagery of vanity.   This idea of vanity being symbolised in a mirror, and yet, they say that if ur so ugly that ull break a mirror often seen in cartoons and such.  This taken into account and trying to portray this idea of a mirror being all about self image and self estme, both a sign of vanity and a sign of those who dont like how they look. for this i want a play on words about how people see themselves, vanity, and this idea of some loving how they look, and how others hate how they look. So far ive got 'so if u look into the mirror and dont like what u see, you know what its like to be me' i think it works as if ur asking someone who loves themselves to see it from the other point of view.

This idea of shoes on the table, and the style makes me think about what i am still wanting to say about the images. The style is very glam, almost high fashion, stylistic wise. The thing i was focusing on was pairing the locations of the shoot with the feel or image of the shoes. Both images ive chosen are heels, and thinking just about how heels make u feel. High heels shoes make girls feel taller, more confident, special, like a princess, and i mean what princess is based around shoes? cinderella.

Finally the last superstition i am focusing on so far is the new years eve superstition. The text i would like to use would involve a date stamp to suggest its new years eve, and something about doors opening and closing, the obvious being, when one door closes another one opens. I also think this would be a good conclusion to the book. as the sort of 'finishes with a door opening' rather ironically. The image also is so dark it is almost appearing black, to which does relate back to the first images being black and white.

I also wanted to look into this idea of a key following looking at the wrok of James C Christiansen and his paintings. Following the last image i would like to include a list of all the superstitions used in my book in the order they came in.

hair cold grid experimentation

When looking at making these into grids i was looking at what i thought would work well together, image wise, and thinking of the overall grid.
Thinking about it, i think a 2 x 2 grid would be optimal for this project, i didnt want them overly small, as i wanted to see detail in the way the hair falls and looks, the shapes and patterns it makes.
the obvious and simple  2 x 2 gride focusing on just the darker images to create a connection, here i used one where u can see past the hair and see the background and the shadows but im very unsure about.

i did also concider using a grid with different colour hair but i dont think it looks as impactual as the grid before.

though in all honestly my fave grid here would be the one below, just  a plain and simple grid with all the same colour and it allows u to focus on the hair and the shapes and contoritons its making.