Format Festival Photographer Case Study

Jack Simon. "Through a glass darkly".

I found this photographer at Format Festival and fell in love immeditately. His project called 'Through a glass darkly' features reflections of people through windows creating a 'double exposure' look with intending to. His main aim for this project wasn't to take pictures of reflection but to revisit the photographs he had taken throughout his time as a photographer and a pattern formed. 

'Reflections within reflections, images of people in the act of watching or being watched present the layers of information and poetics of public space.'

In this picture I have taken this as an example because it fits the subject matter of voyeurism and the gaze. It features the photographer looking at the person who is watching a film maybe? But just so happens he has taken the picture of the person looking at a naked bum. Is it simply surveillance or much darker than that? We don't really know because we were not there to experience him taking it.

Artist Statement

Blissfully Unaware - Kyla Lynskey

Kyla Lynskey has created a series of 'throw away' disposable images. She wanted to explore the social world as it is today. She looks at how social networking effects our generation and how routine rules our lives. She took them on disposable cameras to not be intrusive to whoever she was taking pictures of. She wanted to make surveillance type photographs because she has an interest in observing people. 
Kyla researched many different documentary photographers for her work, one in particular was Tom Wood who took similar photographs to these ones. Wood's work was taken in the early 90's entitled 'Looking for Love'. He takes a similar approach but photographs couples specifically kissing. These colourful film photographs were a great inspiration to her work. 

Comparing and Contrasting Notions of Surveillance and Voyeurism

Merry Alpern - Dirty Windows.

I have chosen to contrast and compare these two images. One is from a very voyeuristic approach whereas the other is more of a surveillance one. 

The first one I want to talk about is Merry Alpern's Dirty Windows. The image shows a woman, not really doing very much but we assume because the artist has called the piece ‘Dirty Windows’ that it must be somewhat uncouth. It has been taken in black and white to add to the whole dark atmospheric mood of the image and the image is cleverly cropped without intention to. The image was created in 1994 and I believe was taken using a telephoto lens. Viewers looking at this voyeuristic shot feel somewhat uneasy but still want to know more about it. Merry Alpern took surveillance to the next level by spying on a bathroom window of a sex club near Wall Street. I really think that the work is aesthetically pleasing even if the subject matter is a bit hard to handle, I think that Merry Alpern just wanted to shock viewers with her latest work with this voyeuristic angle, nothing wrong with that and as Michel Foucault said ‘He who is subjected to a field of visibility and who knows it, assures responsibility for the constraints of power, he makes them pay spontaneously upon himself.’ Therefore stating that if you don’t want to be watched don’t make it easy for them.

Tom Wood - Looking For Love

The next one is Tom Wood who has taken a more surveillance approach to his work. Instead of taking Merry Alpern's technique and snapping something shocking he has gone for a more open every day look. He has called his series 'Looking for Love' because each photograph has been taken in the same club over a period of years. 

'The 31 predominantly colour photographs offer an anthropological glimpse into a world of youthful hopes and desires.'

It also shows more a wider story about what people were getting up to in clubs without going over the top. 

A lot of people could disagree about this picture not being voyeuristic but in my eyes a bunch of people don't get me going but then again I'm not sure about everyone else? But I could see how Merry Alpern's image could get someone going?  I believe that voyeuristic images have to shock people in a naughty way, even if you put it as an arty pornographic image?

Globalisation

Zed Nelson - Love Me - Billboard, Rio, Brazil 

Zed Nelson's Love Me series approaches the subject of globalisation extremely effectively, he explores the vast different countries and how they approach beauty in their life. 

On this particular image he has taken a picture of a billboard sign, an advertisement for a cosmetic brand. It is a huge image that has been placed on a very large tall building to attract passers by to buy the product. 

The series shows the varied ways of how beauty effected individuals around the world. He talks about South African women who are driven by caucasian beauty that have operations to make them look barbie doll like. I agree that the world is driven by western media and commercials promoting a narrow idea of beauty. 

Nelson is worried about how out of hand it could get, how it could affect the social world around us, how it could affect individuals finding it hard to find a job because of how attractive they are? 

'We have created a world in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties attached to the way we look' - Zed Nelson.

Repetition

Ed Ruscha - Twenty six Gasoline Stations

Ed Ruscha has made a book about documenting these 26 gas stations. He took a journey from where he lived at the moment in LA to where he first grew up in Texas. This is an interesting way to show a personal journey through documenting each gasoline he comes across. I really like how each image is completely different to the next but still has this repetition element to the work. This has been produced into a book which is sequenced in order of the journey. 
"Ruscha's books combined the literalness of early California pop art with a flat-footed photographic aesthetic informed by minimalist notions of repetitive sequence and seriality....Thirty years later, with a quarter of a century of mainstream artworld activity between, the aspect of shock-effect and humor has diminished somewhat. But in 1962 (sic) this work read against the photographic landscape of highly aestheticized image-making." Joanna Drucker^[9]

The Rhetoric of Images

Andy Warhol - Marilyn


One of the most iconic images from Andy Warhol. He has created this image of Marilyn Manroe and repeated it by printing it differently in each squared image. He hasn't just done one use of this image, he has used it throughout his years as an artist. 
He has took an image of a vey famous and respected actress and screen printed her face in so many different ways. Warhol is really interested in celebrities and death combined and I believe that this was his main inspiration for this whole body of work. Looking at these images like this doesn't make me feel any emotion, I just take them for what they are, beautiful pieces of art. I like how he has created these images from one simple portrait of Marilyn and then turning it into so many different interpretations of the image.

The Gaze

 Kohei Yoshiyuki's 'The Park' Series


Yoshiyuki's voyeristic shots of the series tie in with 'the gaze'. The woman is desired by the men around her and seem to be focusing all their attention on her.
'My intention was to capture what happened in the parks, so I was not a real 'voyeur' like them. But I think, in a way, the act of taking photographs itself is voyeuristic somehow. So I may be a voyeur, because I am a photographer'. He quotes which then asks the question is he part of the gaze?
This series 'The Park' features shots taken in Tokyo, Japan of picture having sex whilst strangers watch. This park was used for anyone wanting to participate in such activities and couldn't afford a room at a love hotel. Kohei looked out upon voyeurs who watched and sometimes touched other couples. Sex before marriage was frowned upon and thats why some couples went to park at night to make love. 
'He used a 35-millimetre camera with infrared film and a filtered flashbulb, allowing him to take photographs in the dark without hardly anyone noticing.'
My favourite was how he exhibited the project by turning off all the lights in the room and having the viewers go around with a torch to have a look at them, a relevant approach to the whole subject matter and to let the viewers see what e actually had to go through to capture these images. Yoshiyuki destroyed the prints short after the exhibition and returned to work as a professional photographer, I think that he was under pressure from what he had taken which made him change his mind about what he has created.