For my student choice portfolio, my aim is to carefully craft a visual example of my photography skill and experience portraying identity through different means of photography. In this project my theme is Identity and should take me around 6 months to complete. I chose identity because it's such a wide window, it could mean lots of different things to different people. I can start photographing people in Piccadilly gardens in Manchester to get photos of a vast variety of people. Piccadilly gardens is always filled with all sorts of people from many different walks of life. Another trip I could do could be to Afflecks Palace in Manchester, Afflecks is always filled with lots of different people with shops made for all sorts of different people and can help me capture a wider range of identity. Overall my goal for this project I intend to create photography representing the identity of us all as humans, no matter who we are.
After I've completed my shoots, I plan on using inspiration from other photographers to help get a professional style to my shoots that to some might seem random. This can help me achieve high quality and help deepen the meaning behind my photos. The photographer Tony Luciani is a massive inspiration to my photography project. His most famous photography is his photographs of his elderly mother and mostly consists of comparisons of age and how her identity has grown and changed. I enjoy the grey, dull tones to his photos and the almost colourless nature of them. His photos give me loads of ideas of how I can play with ideas of identity and what makes us, us in my photography.
The thought of Identity seemed very dull to me at first and only gave me ideas of portraits but through some research my mind opened up to new ideas of how I can portray identity and humanity in photography. Identity can be our age, gender, hair colour, race, music taste, clothing style, culture, friends, family or anything that is part of us. I can photoshop eyes, a nose, ears, a mouth together from different people to create a face to show a diverse range of identity. My edits will be inspired by the artwork of Hannah Hoch, her artwork is something I wish to resemble through my photography, similar to “Montage of heck” (Kurt Cobain of Nirvana’s home recordings). My edits will mostly be experimental, not following any sort of formula, just going off of the photos I've taken and are using for a given edit. This can help me when it comes to exams, I will have a better understanding of editing and what works best, helping me build better skills as a photographer. These will help me show better technique and higher quality work overall.
I feel a lot more confident in photography compared to the portrait project. I take a lot of photos on my phone every weekend when I'm in Manchester with my friends, which has positively impacted my photography and camera skills. I know that I am going to complete this project to the best of my ability, building a good sense of identity in my finished pieces of work. By the end of this project I hope to iron out all my photography flaws and show professional levels of work and skill. My overall goal for this project is to create a final piece that represents the identity of us as humans no matter what makes us different, hopefully bringing people together.
Mind map
Analysis
"Que me veux-tu?" is a photograph published in 1928 by Claude Cahun, translating directly from French as "What do you want of me". Cahun lived in Jersey off of the coast of Normandy France. She was jewish and eventually lived in nazi-occupied France, handing out anti-nazi propaganda in the 1940s. All of her photgraphy challenged gender and sexual norms, with Cahun being born as Lucy Schwob but later changing it to the gender neutral "Claude Cahun". The photo was made to challenge gender norms of the 1920s. Only men and women were accepted genders, people weren't open to other forms of identity so Cahuns photography was a massive leap and was very experiemental and risque. David Bowie showed interest in Cahuns photos by arranging an exhibit of her photos in 2007 in New York, quoting her photographs as "really quite mad". Her photography mostly took off in the 90s when gender norms became a wide issue and started to take off. Double exposure in the 20s is created using film. If 2 photos are taken on the same piece of film it creates a double exposure effect, due to the nature of film, the result can only be seen when the film has been developed in a redroom, making double exposure a very difficult skill in the 20s. The invention of digital cameras take away most the skill of double exposure. Gender is a social construct that this photo aims to break, I like this idea of breaking free from social constructs and experimenting with how photography can help us do that.
The photo is of 2 heads looking in diffrent directions, one representing masculinity and one representing femininity. They are eying each other up almost suggesting an oppsoition or tension between them. The photo is landscape framing, we can tell because the photo is wider than it is tall. The photo represents the difference between masculine and feminine and presents gender as a spectrum and as something that can be experimented with and changed to better express someone. The title "Que me veux-tu" meaning "What do you want from me" is possibly implying changing yourself to suit someones desire or asking how to better suit that persons needs. The title gives us a really deep view into the photo and almost adds another layer to our view, I feel like this title is key to understanding the photo, its an extrordinay dive ino Cahuns mind, the title clerverly fits the photo, especially given the context. This photo reminds me of the music video to "Violet" by hole (pictured below). This photo also reminds me on the album cover "incesticide" by nirvana (also pictured below). The picture isn't very realistic with the way the two heads phase into each other. We can tell Cahun distorted the photo with the editing that phased the heads into each other. The theme of the work is gender, the two heads represent male and female, the phasing effect in the middle representing non binary. This photo is trying to convey a message of gender norms and equality, especially given the time period it came from.
This photo is really interesting in terms of how its composed, theres no leading lines in sight, our eyes are instantly drew to the models eyes as a focal point. We can only see a tight field of depth and very small framing to just capture the models heads. Cahun likely did this to help with making the double exposure effect, this also helps us prove that they used a tripod, we can safely assume Cahun used a tripod because we can't see any shakiness in the photo or motion blur and it would of been most convinient for creating the desired effect. There is only foreground because of how tight the photo is. A high ISO was used, we can tell because the photo is very bright and very noisy. I believe a high ISO was used to help create this effect on purpose but there is the chance that this is just due to the cameras avaliable at the time. Asymetry is used masterfully in this photo, showing Cahuns experise. The two heads facing different directions in perfectly selected angles to create the right effect for the photo. The photo is in black and white but this is because of camera technology avaliable at the time.
Personally Im not the biggest fan of this photograph, I don't feel like I relate to the context or meaning behind the photograph. The photo doesn't leave much to interpretation and has a clear set meaning which I feel takes away from the photo. The photo only tells us one story and doesn't have much depth to it. I can learn from this photo by taking inspiration in the photographers methods,for example,I can take inspiration of having long shutter speed to get two poses from the model.
Moodboards
Claude Cahun
Plan for Shoots
Name: Theo
Project Title/ shoot number: Identity shoot 2
Description of aims for shoot: Create a high quality gallery of photos for my identity student choice.
Links with Photographers I'm linking this shoot with Claude Cahun, Tom Luciani and the artist Hannah Hoch.
Location: In school, I will get some photos around Manchester.
Props/ items needed:
N/A, I will just need models to wear their own clothes.
Kit needed e.g. lighting, tripod, backdrop, macro lens:
Camera, no lighting (My settings will have to match this).
Camera settings I will use:
F-Stop : My F-stop isn’t gonna be set in stone and will vary depending on if I like the background and edit it out.
White Balance: My shoot will be outdoors without artificial lighting. My white balance will mostly be daylight but I'll also use shady and cloudy weather depending on the weather.
Shutter speed: My shutter speed will vary between 1/30 and 1/125 but mostly will be experimenting to find the right settings based on the conditions around the photo including natural light and model. ISO: I usually follow the rule of keeping my ISO as low as possible but this shoot helps to be grainy so I will experiment with higher ISOs but high shutter speed to balance out the ligh.
Which compositional rules will I use? (Rule of Thirds, even numbers, odd numbers, symmetry, asymmetry, leading lines, patterns, repetition, triangles, birds eye view, worms eye view, central focal point) I will try to use lots of odd numbers to create an abstract feel to my photos. I want lots of asymmetry in my gallery. Central focal points can contribute towards my edits and make it much easier to create much more powerful edits. Asymmetry will make my edits much more complex and help me achieve high quality end results.