Chris Killip- RetrospectiveThis exhibition pays tribute to the legacy of Manx photographer Chris Killip (1946-2020). Killip's continued efforts to value and document the lives of those affected by the economic shifts in the North of England, throughout the 1970s and 80s, have made him one of the most influential figures of British Photography.
With more than 140 works, this retrospective serves as the most comprehensive survey of the photographer's work to date and includes previously unseen ephemera. Grounded in sustained immersion and participation in the communities he photographed, Chris Killip's keenly observed work chronicled ordinary people's lives in stark, yet sympathetic, detail. His photographs are recognised as some of the most important visual records of 1980s Britain; telling the story of those who had history 'done to them', who felt its malicious disregard and yet, like the photographer with whom they shared so much of their lives, refused to yield or look away. |
Antoni Campaña - Spain (Catalonia) 1906-89This image, made from the Rosary Basilica in Lourdes, France, shows the Catalan photographer Antoni Campaña challenging conventional ideas of vision, space and light.
He points his compact 35mm Leica camera straight down, the aerial view transforming the urban street into an abstract form with an unconventional perspective. The photograph shows passersby in his field of vision with the light and shadow striking and modeling their bodies, giving the viewer a new and dynamic optical experience. Campaña was a renowned art photographer as well as a studio and editorial professional. As a photojournalist during the Spanish Civil War, he made a remarkable body of work that was only rediscovered in 2018. He created celebrated collections of postcards, wrote about photography, and ran photographic and developing shops in Barcelona. |
Roy DeCarava - USA, 1960In DeCarava's portrayal, the anonymous woman isn't treated as symbolic, but human, Small details individuate her. Her foot is poised just above the ground and the movement creates a wrinkle in her thick stockings, while the corner of her scarf flutters out to the side. Graffiti on the walls remind us of the specificity of space. The day is cold, and the sun is bright, DeCarava claimed, I wanted my work to be more human. I was looking to express something I felt', In presenting what he felt, he reinterpreted ideas of chance and intuition as embodied by another of his influences, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. 'The black aesthetic", DeCarava once explained, 'is about communication. If is both an intuitive sense and a conscious choice. A matter of being understood, and being heard
|
I like the concept of this idea, however I feel that the final piece is a lot more difficult to pull off than I had imagined. For this reason I decided to stick the images onto a wall so I could have greater control over their positioning as the strings were very fidgety and were harder to control. Even after overcoming this, I still wasn't very pleased with how the final piece came out in regards to the technique. Nevertheless, I still very much enjoy the three dimensional aspect of the initial photos and I still find Annette Messager's aim and approach very interesting and would possibly come back to her work later in my development for some inspiration. I also would've made all the girls have the same expression on their faces to make it more consistent and have a greater impact on the experience of the viewer. I think making the images black and white helped with the flow of the final piece and eliminated any distractions so that it would purely be about the three dimensional experience.
|
SANDRO BOTTICELLI, PRIMAVERA, C. 1477–82
This painting, usually known as the Primavera [or ‘Spring’] shows nine figures from classic mythology advancing over a flowery lawn in a grove of orange and laurel trees. The painting is a celebration of love, peace, and prosperity.
|
RAPHAEL, THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN, 150The Virgin's Marriage was painted by Raphael in 1504 for the Albizzini Chapel at the Church of San Francesco al Prato in Città di Castello. It's taken from a book called The Golden Legend, regarding the marriage of the Virgin Mary to Saint Joseph.
|
David Hockney uses segmentation to emphasise the movement of his subject. The segments have been arranged to make the movement appear in a similar way to motion blur, as each segment shows a different movement. There is also use of repetition; this could be to show the repetitiousness of ice skating, or simply to make it appear more surreal. The segments also work well to accentuate the shape of his subjects. He has used a complementary colour scheme, (Blue and White), so the image is not striking to the eye, this may be intentional or unintentional. What I find most interesting about Hockneys's work is his technique and the aim of this work to fragment the different components of movement, attaching them together in a collage. I plan to take photos of people playing sports and fragmenting and piecing them back together to highlight the different parts of the body required to move in such ways and perform different movements. The aim of this is to appreciate how our body functions. |
Landscape layeringIn this task, I went out and photographed different landscapes, trying to experiment with the different structures in each. I went to Alexandra Palace and photographed the forest areas there and also captures a sunset. I was very pleased with these initial photographs. I liked the sunset one very much because it wasn't just an ombre of colours, it had the darker grey elements of the clouds contrasting with the light peach clouds for texture and tones. I also like the variation of tree branches that I captured as they create different shapes to work with later on in the development. I would've loved to capture more sunsets and get more colours to work with as I feel they're very similar to the type of photographs Nobuhiro Nakanishi captured for his work. Layering more colours would've created a different kind of atmosphere that I would've liked to experiment with. |
Sunset shootsI went outside and captured a sunset, specifically a change in the colours within the space of 10 mins. I plan to print these out on acetate and layer them together to combine the shapes of the clouds and colours to produce a layered, dimensional experience of perception. This is taking inspiration from Nobuhiro Nakanishi's work where he looks at atmospheric skies and landscapes, sunsets and rises in particular. I really love watching how the colours in the sky bleed into each other and change so quickly and the shape and movement of the clouds and I believe that I was able to successfully document it.
|
In this task, I used a film camera to capture different urban and rural landscapes. For example, I captured various trees and then also buildings, some of which were under construction which further captured the idea of 'man-made'. After gathering these photos, I went into the dark room and experimented with layering the photos from the strip of film on top of each other. Before I did this, I tested the exposure of the photos by creating a test strip where I altered the amount of time they were exposed for. I did this all at an aperture of f/8 and I found that 5-6 seconds of exposure produced the best results. At first I layered the film strip on top of each other physically in the enlarger. This wasn't as successful as it was coming out too dark. I then tried exposing one image of the trees and re-exposing an image of the buildings on top, exposing for only 4 seconds this time on each image. I found that this created a more ideal exposure and created some images that I am very happy with. I particularly like the first three images as the images aren't just pasted on op of each other but the tree and buildings are blended into one another a bit more. |
Once I downloaded the photos, I edited them using photoshop to produce images in the style of Fong Qi Wei. To do this I uploaded my best photos from the sunset that portrayed each stage successfully and layered them on top of each other. Once I did this, I selected the first image and used the polygonal lasso tool to select a portion of it, in my case I created a triangular shape to start a pattern that mimicked sun rays. I right clicked on it and created a layer from the cut out. Then I selected the next image in the sequence whilst still having the view of the first cut out layer so I knew where to cut out the next bit from. I repeated this with all the images until I had included all the stages of the sky. To make the image flow more nicely, I went back and used the paint brush to fill in some of gaps in the silhouettes of the leaves and the trees in the background to make sure that it was only the sky that changed. I then carried on experimenting with editing. I used the marquee tool to do the same process, creating circles of the stages this time. I think that both these processes were very successful, I especially liked the outcome of the circular one and using the first and last stages only.
|
|
After taking photos of several different sunsets, I had to select the sunset that I think was the best to be able to develop into my final piece. I found that one of my earlier sunsets had the best colour and patterns in the sky so I decided to further edit that one. I then edited these photos on photoshop by using the elliptical marquee tool again and cropping 6 circles, having the seventh layer being the square background. this prepared me for the physical mounting of the images. Once I had my final images, I printed each stage out on an acetate sheet using an Inkjet printer. These acetate sheets will then be mounted onto seven perspex which will sit on a wooden stand as the final piece. |