Rotations: Photography

Final Image: Branding litter.

Final Image: Where a £10 note can get you...

Final Image: Looting tea cakes and a cup of coffee.

In the third week of rotations it was photography. I was really looking forward to this workshop as I had really enjoyed the single day we had in the area at the start of the course.
On the first day it was explained to us we had to have a go at a project out of college as well as several workshops during my days at college. The out of school project was to argue for or against the idea that modern life was rubbish and the first workshop within college was to create some photo grams. To make my photo grams. I used a variety of objects such as half a bottle, a transparent perfume bottle, thread and some materials that I had in my bag left over from the 3D rotations. These created some really interesting and striking images that were surprisingly easy to make.
I found that all of my images work and were successful although getting the exposure time to provide the strongest image was really just down to trial and error. After creating our photo grams we had a look at photographers who cropped images to either get multiple meanings or change the meaning of the original image. One photographer who I researched was John Baldessari. Who cropped certain parts of a photography and replaces it with a block colour such as a persons face. I thought all of his images were incredibly interesting because he gave every photo a sense of humor especially in some where the original mood of the photo was quite the opposite. I found a Martin Parr image that he took in Brighton to crop. I split the image into four sections and gave each one a different caption, (from top to bottom) Mothering, kidnapped, bathing and next generation. This worked really well as it gave an already powerful and hard hitting image a completely different meaning.
On the second day I was off ill, although I found out through one of the tutors that the class were looking at how to present and organise your work so it has the most effect on your audience so I spent the majority of the day putting final editing touch ups on my pictures and thinking of the best way to present them on the final day of the rotation.
On the final day of the rotation I brought in three very strong images that all had very literal meaning but also a few underlying and more subtle meanings that the viewer could interpret in their own way. I found that this was similar to some of Richard Billingham's work in such as in his collection named 'Ray's a laugh' because his work also contained pictures that at first were very obvious and showed literal meaning but when you spent longer analysing and looking at the photographs they really made you think about the ideas of what he was trying to put forward.
My first photograph was based around littering in the modern life and has a Coca cola can in the foreground in front of a variety of other rubbish such as an old newspaper and other big branded litter. My initial idea was to put emphasis on the Coca Cola can as it is one of the biggest and most well know brand logos in the world and is not only a huge source of litter but also the epitome of globalisation, standardisation and an example of other overpowering brands that have shaped the world we live in today. Also the newspaper in the background is meant to represent how the media are a massive contribute to increasing the amount of control and money these brands have.

In my second photograph is meant to represent drug abuse in the modern world. The composition of the photo was a young adult snorting a line of cocaine  The idea of this photo was not to fill it with subtle underlying meanings but to make it a hard hitting and effective image. Something else that really adds meaning to this photo is that an old classmate of mine passed away due to an overdose of cocaine in the same week I took this photo. My final photo was based around the London riots which I felt summed up the decline of modern society with children as young as 8 looting just to get a hold of the latest consumer trends. Then when the looting and destruction turned to small businesses it was clear that what started from greed turned into just mindless violence and anti-social behavior. I found it incredibly difficult to get a good quality shot for this picture because to get the feeling of movement out of a stationary pose is a challenge in itself. Overall I felt my pictures came well although it was a challenge to take a powerful image with the both meaning and quality behind it.

Cropped Martin Parr Image.