Shelley and I went down to the Giants Causeway and had a bit of banter with lights. We couldn't find the Giants boot much to my frustration, then the battery died, rotten luck!

Derelict.

“Derelict spaces have a strange power and fascination. They stir up strong memories and cause us to question our sense of the permanence of the built environment that surrounds and shapes us, and our ideas about utility, market values and heritage”

At the beginning of this project I struggled to gain a theme/topic to document. Juggling ideas of transport, and one from the set readings I had the idea to go into hospitals and picture the patients who appear normal on the exterior but on the interior they had lung cancer, or some other kind of internal disease,  Similar to Fred Lonidiers piece, “The Health and Safety Game.” But as I walked down the main street in Portstewart I passed the Montague Arms a pub that I had eaten many of £5 carveries and played many games of pool in as a young teen had been boarded up. And I began to think similar to Lonidier in the idea that, “documentary photographers have converted violence and suffering into aesthetic objects” only in the context of buildings. A derelict building is a Non Educated Delinquents (NED’s)playground, the picture “Open Door” can display this idea, I found being in that room and seeing the damage allowed me to think of perhaps the family that once sat in that room, or the business that was once run from there and how un-inhabitance renders buildings as ‘destroyable’ to NED’s. Although, sounding very much like a hippy that vacant space has been sitting for dear knows how long, and has finally been swooped up for its inevitable demolition and soon to be new apartment block with stunning sea views, do we really need another apartment block in this  already over developed  town?

“It is the truth of American street photographs...that gives them their special artistic and psychological interest. Their style and their subject matter in a state of consonance, they randomly sample their subject matter. They show fragments, randomly set out. Arbitrarily cut off, with bizarre juxtapositions, and these epithets invite us to move from photograph to the culture and people in them.” (Beloff 1985:99) Instead of the culture and the people in them, my pictures I feel allow people to engage with what once could have been there, and who may have been sitting and what where they doing there in most of my pictures but especially ‘sitting arrangements’.  ‘Seating arrangements’ is similar to Marina Rosler’s, “The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems”. I took her idea of picturing an area in my case a room, and instead of adding texts of words to describe who was there, I’m allowing the viewer to add their own texts about who has been there. In essence, forcing them to become active engagers with the photographs, forcing them to question the absent, but evidently, once present inhabitants of the room. “The photographs consistently pull us back to the streets”, I want the photographs I take to pull us back to the basics of the structure we are viewing, to convey misery and the dilapidated state of these places. 

“Documentary testifies, finally, to the bravery or (dare we name it?) The manipulative ness and savvy of the photographer, who entered situations of physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble”. This quote has quite possibly been the soul source of inspiration for my pictures. Walking through crumbling warehouses, and mouldy floored houses, walking up broken and burnt staircases, all to gain some pictures that some will partake in for a few moments and think nothing more about it, in essence, risking my physical health.

During the project I decided to semiologically juxtapose some things in to some images to see if I could evoke new meanings from the images. In very dense overgrown gardens  I placed modern items like mobile phones and I-pods, but shooting a wide shot and the items only noticed under close scrutiny, which would be more subtle than the likes of ‘Banksy’ and his pieces. After capturing these images with the modern/old juxtaposition, i decided against using this idea any more as I felt that it would allow the viewer to question the entire photographs ability to be true, which I felt would be difficult considering the pictures depict very raw scenes that are clearly not staged. 

‘Back Alley’

Down the back stairs, opposite the apartments is where I found this alley way...

 I’ve walked past this alley way a thousand times in the last few years, but as I approached it I saw the burnt settee, and I knew that regardless of the rest of the alleys contents that the settee itself would be a good source for some pictures. It was the ‘ping-pong’, ricocheting from wall to wall idea with regards to the settee to the, wooden board to the, metal cage to the, police cone and finally to the calor gas tank. And for me the red ‘calor’ sign on the tank is the direct centre of the picture, lead to by the strong lines of the alley sides/walls. 

‘Stairwell’

Though the half bricked up doorway, into the ground floor...

The light fitting in this shot is what made me take it. The light hangs there like a hanging puppet with no puppeteer. Choosing my composition in this shot I decided to have the upper stair case appear to lead onto the foreground roof. Photographing stairs, and the viewing them, our natural inclination would be to start at the bottom and follow the line up to the top. So this picture I feel has a good dynamic flow in it.

‘Open Door’

Up the ‘stairwell’ to the open door...

 It took me about 35 setups and about 120 images to get a composition I felt worked best with the room and what it had to offer. Upon entering the room for the first time I remember feeling the room just oozing with potential for some great pictures. After the first shoot I returned to my computer to find myself suitable dissatisfied with the images, and upon arriving for the second shoot I found that people had been in the room since I had last been, bringing new and interesting compositions that had previously not been available aka the breeze block. Sadly, cropped slightly from the left to remove a ‘dead’ area boosted the overall feel of the picture, but lost some of the writings. A variety of leading lines, lead the viewer around the picture, the perpendicular angle of the door to the wall, the breeze block and the rafter along the roof lead you in a parallelogram shape around the picture. Visually a shallow picture, but with the writings on the wall the picture is injected with understanding of the inhabitant NED’s and applies another layer to the photograph, a textual layer, not there but my own accord but adding immensely to the overall feel of the picture. 

‘Warm me up bitch, this things busted’

Opposite the open door...

 I felt that the humour of the NED’s had displayed on the radiator was too good to pass up. I’d like to say that I had a better reason for taking this picture, and subsequently using it but unfortunately I do not. 

‘Stairway’

Up to the cliff top car park, along the path, hop the wall, down past the water pipe spraying a fine mist across the garden to the rear of another derelict house...

  The zigzag leading lines bring you further and further up the picture due to the angular steps and roofs of the shed and outhouse. With each property I found I decided to show the pictures in a linear fashion as I found them, and as they led onto other pictures within the house.   What I found interesting about this property is from the front it bares no physical resemblance to that of a stereotypical derelict building. But from the back 90% of the windows being boarded up shows a contrast to the front. I choose this picture over the many others of the same part of the building because of the subtle blues in the non-boarded windows in contrast to the mono-tone/ dreary boards on the lower windows.  I was disappointed when I got into the building to find that I could not access the to the stairs with the stain glass window pictured in this photo, which I feel would have been a great picture as a few panes of the window had been smashed. But the interior was split into a flat on the lower floor which I could access 2 additional flats above it.

‘Lavatory’

Under the stairs, in ‘stairway’, an outside lavatory...

 I found the toilet by accident, waving my torch around to expose the roof under the shed and when I looked at the picture on my LCD display I noticed a toilet-like item under the door. The image I felt gained a new, deeper meaning once I found the toilet. The toilet, something that must be kept clean as it is seen as the 2^nd dirtiest thing in your house. I found it interesting/ironic that it is surrounded by moss, and debris. I find the deep greens allow the white and wooden planks stand out more. And my torch highlighted the toilet enough, many previous attempts I had over used the torch to much and completely lost the toilet but in this one I feel it is just enough to highlight its existence but not scream it. The lead in lines from the grey piping in the bottom left lead us right to what is my intention to be the centre of the picture, the toilet. 

‘Armchair Barricade’

Through the out-house door, in through the broken toilet window, passed the smashed shower doors, and into the hall to find the armchair barricade...

 This picture was the first I took of the chair and I still feel it is the best. The torch light I shook quickly so as I did not get patches of light. The chair it seemed acted as a barricade to the bathroom through which I entered. When I look at the chair and how the light falls on it, it somehow brings the chair into its own. I find that the main question I think people will be asking themselves when they see this picture is why in the middle of the hall? But as I studied the room hall I found the answer, the smoke alarm. As I moved into the living room I found all the flats smoke alarms on a table all with the batteries disconnected.

‘Hoover’

Other side of the armchair barricade, the Hoover...

 The Hoover struck me as being odd. Untouched by anyone tucked in behind the inner door, as if the owner was out, and would b returning to user it later perhaps. And the light spilling from the single bedroom opposite adds an eerie feel as if the room was in use by someone. 

‘Seating Arrangements’

Main living room, past the armchair barricade...

 This image, composition wise I feel flows with the light. The heavy shadows behind the chairs, exposing a path of light on the carpet leading our eye up to the table. I wanted to evoke the thoughts of who moved these seats here? Or perhaps how the room had been previously set out by the owners. I feel there is a sense that we are allowed to look but not touch or sit in the seats, like we are at a museum exhibition and there is a sign, “Please do NOT sit on the display chairs”. 

‘Emergency Exit’

Two roundabouts before the University, Loughan Industrial Estate...

Driving to the Jet centre one afternoon for the afternoon showing, out of the corner of my eye I spot a huge skeleton of a warehouse. I drove up and took a look around. Within the grounds of the bare warehouse there were a few small workshops with people working in them. So I walked around the perimeter fence to see any weakness and I found a beautiful flap in the fence that I could fit through. Under the cover of darkness about half eleven I returned, through the gap in the fence and I was greeted by the emergency exit. I had hoped to get this shot in daylight but I didn’t want the workers in the workshops to know I had been there at night so the shot had to be taken at night. The irony with in this picture is probably its best character. I feel shooting with the tripod and using a long exposure has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages, the light coming from right to left that highlights the door frame wouldn’t be there if I didn’t expose for 20”. Disadvantages, I lost any dynamics I could have received from sharp clouds, sure I could have ‘photoshopped’ in a great, dynamic cloudy sky in, but would the buildings frame still stand out like it does against the orange? For that reason I left it.

‘Skeleton’

Adjacent to the ‘emergency exit’...

This was the last picture I took for the project. And I love it. This time I have no doubts about the clouds moulding to the solid orange, I feel that it highlights the structures never changing-ness and the clouds ever changing-ness, which leads us to question how ourselves as mere humans are to survive the changes time brings with it. The subtle right to left lighting and the street light provide vital lighting to the inner foreground and to the frame of the warehouse. 

I feel that I have produced a credible piece of work having kept my original visions and ideas in tact and experimenting with other ideas. The piece I feel can reflect that normal exteriors can hide horrible, dilapidated interiors, which is not too dissimilar to my original idea of the patients in the hospital only with buildings. I hope that this project will fill the users’ visual appetite, as there is a lot to take in, in each picture but I also hope to evoke inner feelings and realisations about the surrounding concrete jungle that we live in. 

Bibliography.

 HYPERLINK "http://www.thederelictsensation.com/" http://www.thederelictsensation.com/ 13/11/07 13:07

Wells, Liz, “Photography- A Critical Introduction, 2004, Routledge, London

Sekula Allan, “Dismal science: Photo works”, 1999, university of galleries of Illinois state University

Rosler, Martha, “In Around and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography), 2003, Routledge, London

  HYPERLINK "http://www.thederelictsensation.com/" http://www.thederelictsensation.com/ 13/11/07 13:07

 Wells, Liz, “Photography- A Critical Introduction, 2004, Routledge, London

 Sekula Allan, “Dismal science: Photo works”, 1999,  university of galleries of Illinois state University

 Rosler, Martha, “In Around and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography),2003, Routledge, London

With reference to theories developed on the course, Undertake a detailed study if three recent advertisements or fashion images that include representation of me and/or women.

In this essay, I plan to look at three advertisements and deconstruct and analyse the depicted image of gender within the advertisement. The three advertisements I have chosen are, a Lynx Deodorant advert, a Boots advert “Here come the girls.” And an Ann Summers advert “Give him wood”.

I will begin with the Lynx deodorant advert. The advert opens with a young woman standing drenched at the top of a subway entrance, who says “No, you’re not late, it’s my watch, its’ always fast.” As the advert progresses it becomes obvious that everything the women say in this advert completely contradict the way woman behave in the real world. For example, phrases like “You look so sexy playing air guitar”, or “oh how lovely you noticed my breasts” are not realistic phrases that women use every day. Furthermore, after quite a few shots of the female anatomy in this advert, it becomes apparent that the lynx deodorant claims that with it, you get away with anything. With this deodorant, you not only could you arrive late on a date but also turn women to “putty” at the same time. The advert depicts women as being desperate to please the male, so much that they will overlook anytime he does something wrong or says something inappropriate. In every scenario, the male partner has caused problems within the relationship, but this is completely accepted and forgotten by the female partner. Scenarios such as “She meant nothing to you?!.......well in that case I guess I can forgive you” or praising him for “looking at her breasts.” 

The advert also includes many things that a man enjoys. Physical things like sex, sexual fantasies, lap dancing etc, things a man wants physically feature a lot in this advert. “Do you mind if my friend joins us?” is a top fantasy for men, “after sex. I’m out like a light”, “If I’d wanted foreplay I would have asked for it” and “Of course you can have some money for a lap dance”. All of these things would very rarely happen for a male and are quite unrealistic but this lynx product seems to allow you to defy all logic and get them. Women in the advert are very much the attention of the male gaze, firstly because it is a first person camera angle, which means that the women gaze directly towards us and often in many of the scenes, the women have seductive, sensual, and naive looks on their faces. “This heightens the male gaze as we feel that the women, through their portrayal, are effortless and easy women to get with, and that we can easily get what we want from them, that they would give themselves up easier than real women.  “Men are the bearers of the look while women are the object to be looked at.. Women watch themselves being looked at...thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision”.

Forgiveness on the part of the women plays a big part in these adverts, for example the women use expressions like,  “It’s ok, you’ll remember my birthday next year”, “She meant nothing to you, well if you put  it that way I guess I can forgive you”, and “You’re not late, it’s my watch, it’s always fast”. These are all things that we know true women would not stand for in any way, after too many excuses or let downs, the only consequence would be a divorce or end of relationship. There would be no talking your way out of it, but here in this advert, the women seem un-phased by the events, which contrast the image of real women, in fact, they seem to take on the attitude most men have. The woman are very much desirable in this advert, men would want these woman as their partners as they want, need, and give what men want. 

The boots, “here come the girls” advert is a very interesting one in how it represents women. The advert is set in an office, where there is a Christmas dinner being held. The women are beginning to put on their make-up and file their nails. The advert portrays women as taking great pride in their appearance and there is a real a sense of competition between the women. Throughout the advert the women are constantly glancing at each other as if to say, “Oh what’s she going to do with her hair?”, or “I could try that eye make-up”. This is I feel an insight into a woman’s mind, and what she is thinking when she sees another woman, she breaks down her outfit, make-up, and hair and judges it based on her own, and that of celebrities. Why do women try to dress and use make-up, to try to gain attention from the opposite sex? To have a sophisticated aura about them?  “Rather than comparing different images of women one needs to study the meanings signified by women in images with reference, for instance, to man in images. “The advert contains many signifiers that, using semiotics, I can decipher. The cheeky snatches, and evil stares are very much typical of real women. Although the advert is staged, I feel that many of the characteristics that the women in this advert seem to possess are quite accurate to those of real women. However, this is purely my opinion.

There does appear to be a class division, for example, we see women from all ranks of the work place in the advert, cleaners, telephone operators, right up to a woman who appears (and using semiotics to deconstruct her) to be a manager or someone of a superior position to the others. She is dressed in a smart jacket and skirt, whereas the majority of the other employees are dressed in skirts and blouses. This shows that women from all levels of employment still have that basic desire, that yearning to better other women, to look prettier to dress better, to stand out more. The only visual reference to males is in the party before the women arrive, this shows that the advert is very much a women’s advert made for women, men do not feature very much. 

The third advert I am going to concentrate on is the Ann summers advert “give him wood”. The advert from the offset shows woman as objects, desired objects due to their perfect bodies and lingerie. The camera inclines to certain parts of the female anatomy, very difficult for any male to avoid looking at. The advert is very obviously made for the male audience, because the majority of women do not want to look at other (perhaps more attractive/slender) walking around in their underwear. It shows women using their body dressed only in Ann Summers finest lingerie to seduce anyone. It seems to me that one of the men seduced is one of the women’s bosses. The tag line is “Give him wood this Valentine’s day” this is very clearly a sexual innuendo. One is the wooden presents that all the women leave for the males in the advert and the other is the play on words for the male penis. There are some strong visual references made to the male anatomy, one of which displays a woman sanding a pillar shape and the way she caresses it, is aimed to be very seductive to a male viewer, leading us into the male gaze again, a sense of easiness, and willingness of the young woman. This is similar to Kants theory of pleasure with its voyeuristic ideas of watching people for example in the cinema we can watch them quite happily but when the look straight into the camera and make as it where direct eye contact with us we would feel un-easy as an audience. 

The first woman in the advert prowls onto the bed like a lion or tiger, she moves very seductively and sexually across the bed. This animal-like mimicking could resemble her primal instinct of mating. Another one of the women in the advert gives the male a wooden duck then stands waiting expectantly to be stared at, she is almost encouraging the male gaze, she wants the male gaze, it would appear that that is her primary objective, to get the attention of the male. At the start of each scene the woman are the establishing shot, be it their legs, bottoms, bust etc. We only see their faces as the gifts are handed over to the males; it is really only their bodies that are selling the products. There is no real need to see their faces, as this no doubt it not what the male viewer is interested in. “If a woman is shown on an advertisement simply decoratively and not because she has any relevance to the product, then the advertiser must be using her for salacious purposes”. One of the girls bites her lip as she gives her present to the male, this is a very strong sexual message being sent, that she is ready and willing, which complements the male gaze. “The relation between spectator-buyer of these images and the picture of woman created in these photographs is that of forceful intrusion or indeed possessive voyeurism inviting rape”. Although this quote talks about still images of women within adverts I feel it could apply here, especially in this advert. As the women are so scandalously dressed in this advert that the primal desires of males are targeted and the voyeuristic nature through which we watch adverts is similar to Kants theory of pleasure.  

To conclude, the three adverts I have looked at all depict women in an unrealistic manner, there focus on a very small minority of women. Not all women are sex on the brain, not all women will lie to keep their boyfriends, or fiancés happy, and not all woman fight to better other women, but some do. In these adverts, the women are objects of the male gaze and in two of the three adverts, they are desired objects. This is not always the case in advertisements, advertisements such as those for cleaning products and beauty products (Dove) portray a more realistic woman. I feel that the first advert lynx could be enjoyed by both sexes, as the comedy is not limited to just the male sex and I feel that the advert would amuse women as well, since it is such an unlikely portrayal of women. The Boots advert shows a much more realistic representation of women, which is much truer to real life than the Ann Summers advertisement. In this advert women are just the objects on which the products displayed and they only feature in this advert to show off the products to their full potential, the women are exploited in the last advert and are wrongly represented in comparison to real women and their attitudes. 

How Do We Define What ‘Art’ and ‘Culture’ Are?

In this essay using examples of theories and modern examples I aim to look at how we define Art and Culture. I will look at how sometimes it isn’t all ways ourselves who define Art and Culture but sometimes we have it dictated to us from a higher power. I will also discuss how this is present in a few forms of culture i.e. Religion and in Art i.e. Photography, painting, and installations.

In art our perception of what Art is has changed over many years. In the past Art is defined a) by who did it, and b) by where it was displayed. I’ll discuss point A. If I was to go out on to the streets of Coleraine and ask a hundred people to name me a famous female artist, I would imagine a large proportion of people couldn’t answer me. The Gorilla Girls took action at the appalling numbers of female artists whose works were not being displayed in museums due to their sexuality, “Museums all over the world keep them locked up in storage, out of sight. Demand that museums show more art by women NOW!”So from a feminist point of view you had to be a male to create ‘Art’ that could be displayed in museums. Banksy is an example of an extremist in regards to the institutional theory, he goes against all the social norms and rules. By going into museums and replacing original paintings with his altered ones has gained Banksy a high reputation, some of his paintings have been hanging for weeks before people have realised. 

Point B. If Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa on the side of a chippy on the Shank hill Road, would it be as famous as it is today? I don’t think it would. Art is defined by where it is displayed. But does that mean that paintings exterior to those in galleries are not art? I believe this to be false. Art is Art no matter where it is in my view. The murals on the walls, the graffiti, and sculptures in any city are still Art in my eyes. The current exhibition in the Tate Moderns Turbine Hall is a great example of my point. The ‘Crack’ which is 167 metres long and about 3 feet deep fills the length of the Turbine Hall, but take this piece outside of the Tate modern and put it in a footpath or road, is it still art here? Idon’t think it would be, the DOE would be filling it in. Like David Humes’ idea, ‘like food agreeing with you, Art can agree with you’. He was against this idea that you have to agree with what the upper class say is Art, he defends the subjective approach towards art and the judgement of it. Judgement in art is a matter of taste and feeling, taste in Art can vary greatly between people 

Like in art, and being a Christian I looked into Christianity to see if there where any examples of a higher power or group deciding what is and isn’t religion. I found there was a group of people who decided what the rules of the religion where. The group consisted of well established and trusted Rabbis who read the bible and noticed that people can twist most verses of the bible to fit any scenario, so they became the interpreters of the bible- the “yeshiva”, they set the meanings behind each story through a series of binding and loosing. “So they convene a council (yeshiva in Hebrew) to discuss it. After hearing all sides of the issue, they decide to forbid (or should I say bind?) several things.” Binding meaning to forbid certain things and loose meant to embrace or encourage. They essentially shaped the Christian faith to what it is today.

An example of something that is seen as photographic ‘high art’ that I personally find the complete opposite is Martha Roslers “The Bowery in Two Inadequate Representational Systems”. In this piece Rosler has taken twenty four photographs and matched them with twenty four texts. The photographs are all of shop fronts and walls taken along a single street where homeless people have once been, and the texts are merely compilations of descriptive terms for absent homeless people. “Rosler combines twenty four photographs to an equal number of texts...This simple listing of names for drunkenness suggest both the signifying richness of metaphor as well as its referential poverty.”The piece I feel doesn’t deliver any striking, visually brilliant images, any person with a camera could have made this piece, it seems more like a primary school activity, ‘how many words can you think of to describe....?’ This piece I feel from a media studies point of view strikes up symbolic violence, in the idea that Rosler, by using the texts presents the idea of a  ‘vulgar them’ and a ‘civilised us/her’.  And this is similar if not, a good example of Marxism. The idea that a certain ‘upper’ class is dominant over a lower class and dictates what is and isn’t, rendering the lower class slaves to the upper class ideology. In the case of this essay they would dictate what is and isn’t Art. Continuing on the Marxist theory, and the idea of peoplebeing on different classes, “Trinny and Susanna’s’ what not to wear” is an example of both this, symbolic violence and the idea of us getting a form of pleasure from watching people getting put down on national Television.

In conclusion How do we define art and culture, should ideally be unique to each individual as they will derive different things from different works of art, or elements of culture, but while we still have class divisions dictating to others what is and isn’t this ideal cannot be achieved. We are never going to find one piece of art or culture that everyone will like/agree on, it will always be too extreme or specialist a piece of art, or a too violent or a too disruptive piece of culture.  For example if I showed a well known piece of art to a group of art students from London and to a group of people from Kenya, the ‘Londoners’ could take a completely different set of ideas, if not more, than the group of people from Kenya because of their culture and surrounding environment. The art will may mean more to the ‘Londoners’ than the people from Kenya

 http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/freewomenshanghai.shtml

 Bell, Rob, “Velvet Elvis”, 2005, Zondervan, Michigan.

 Sekula Allan, “Dismal science: Photo works”, 1999,  university of galleries of Illinois state University

Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab For Cutie at St. Georges Market 

A little Solidairty

few photos from A Little solidarity last week. poor lighting led to poor iso selection which lead to grain-tastic photos....

derelict return.

Shelley and I went for a wee photo run down to the warehouse i used for last years photography project, aside from loosing the first batch of photos and having to go back down, the results are nice and the place is still wild scary!

Captain cube

captain cube complete. 

stencils results one

worked OK I guess! i'll try it more with different light sources later!

word...

just playing around with the word

creating captain

some of the trials for captain logo. typefaces, styles etc

captain stencils

This is the photograph (by Max Forsythe) that inspired this idea, 

The final outcome
Reversed
cutting in progress
counters included

The idea is to stick this to a window and allow the sun to project the logo onto the floor or wall (dependent on the time of day) and also for the street light jst outside my house to project it onto the wall.

Also like Forsythe, standing infront of the window and allowing the logo to be projected onto my back or chest may create some interesting results!