Self-portrait exercise – submission and reflection

After spending far too much time ‘stalled’ in Part 3, Assignment Three the self-portrait exercise is now completed and ready to go off to my tutor. This is the final image set.

The changes from the images presented previously are the use of the dodge tool to eliminate the dark patch of background at the top left of each image and (of course) adding the text caption. I chose a rounded version of Arial font as being an appropriate balance between formality and informality (artificial handwriting fonts such as Comic Sans do not ‘work’ for me) and it is a font that does not draw attention to itself and away from the image.

Here are the contact sheets (submitted versions are marked up in manuscript)

… and here are the assignment notes

Reflection against assessment criteria

Technical and visual skills

Again, I am generally happy with my technical and visual skills. This was an interesting exercise in using studio lighting without being able to see how the light falls. Assessment and adjustments were made on viewing the results on the camera back screen. Post-processing was appropriate to the effect that I wanted.

Quality of outcome

The images fulfil both the project brief and my personal brief. I believe the basic idea (Shakespeare’s “one man in his time plays many parts”) is presented clearly and coherently.

Creativity

Tricky. The basic idea has been done before (but then how many haven’t?) and the style is modelled on well-known images. However, I had to work out my own lighting and camera styles (owning neither an 8×10 nor a big north-lit studio)

Self-portraiture is a new area for me, a bit outside the comfort zone. I am not particularly uncomfortable on the opposite side of somebody else’s camera, but the exercise felt self-indulgent.

As always, the question of ‘personal voice’ is one for the viewer.

Context

Mixed. The diary part of the exercise generated considerable self-reflection but the subject, by its nature (me) did not require a great deal of research. Similarly, I did not do a great deal of research on alternative treatments. Although there was no ‘light-bulb moment’ I have to say that the Avedon influence suggested itself to me very early and was self-evidently (to me at least) the right way to go.

Assignment 3 – some first drafts

And one man in his time plays many parts. (As You Like It: 2,VII)

I have made a start on Assignment 3, the self-portrait exercise, with three of my ‘roles’, photographer, camera collector and saxophonist. Lighting, camera position and settings will be held constant over the series, so pretty much the only variables will be clothing and props. My idea is to keep it deadpan and to emulate the Richard Avedon ‘nowhere for the subject to hide’ look, with contrasty mono and a plain background.

I am working in a very tight space with three lights. Main light is slightly high (30˚ or thereabouts above my eyeline, and slightly left of centre). Fill light is a big soft box on the floor at my feet. I found I got some nasty shadows on the background wall, so I also placed an open-tube light behind my shoulders to illuminate the wall.

Here are the contact sheets.

The first group of images are pilots to sort out lighting and framing. Framing, in particular is ‘interesting’ because the K-1 does not have a fully reversible screen, so I was using it on a tripod, with the self-timer, on a trial and error basis. I eventually left the framing a bit ‘loose’ so that there was room to tidy it up in the final crop. (I know Avedon used the full frame and printed the film rebates, but he had the luxury of being able to frame each subject precisely.)

After that, I have two sets as ‘the photographer’ (with and without the leather jacket) holding the RB67 as naturally as possible. Although some are posed as if taking a photograph, I eventually did not use them because it looks contrived and may be confused with having taken a mirror selfie. I picked up two other cameras for ‘the camera collector but only took two frames. Finally, I was ‘the saxophonist’. I decided against an ‘action shot’ in favour of holding the instrument in a relaxed way – partly, this was instinct and partly a knowledge (from my pub gig photography) that blowing a wind instrument can distort faces.

I selected these images as a shortlist, all cropped to 5×4 proportions and all similarly framed (belt and upwards). The only Lightroom manipulation has been to open up the shadows (move shadows slider well to the right).

Finally, I made my selections, one for each role and made a contrasty mono conversion in Lightroom (increased clarity and contrast, increased luminance in the flesh tones, general tweaking) which I have saved as a user preset titled “Avedon”

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An idea at last – the diary abandoned

Assignment three is about self-portraits; it says so in the opening sentence, “Drawing upon the examples in Part Three and your own research, you can approach your self-portraits however you see fit.” The diary, which I have been agonising over and is probably my main reason for procrastinating over getting back to blogging, is just a tool to identify a way in.

My 11 day’s worth of diary was pretty much a chronicle of events, mostly pretty routine, and with no ‘deep innermost thoughts’. However, on re-reading it, I find that although much of life is routine (banal, to pick up on Garry, my tutor’s, comments) I do play several different roles, depending on where I am and who I am with. Of course, I should have been thinking about this all the time – after all, I introduce myself in the right-hand column of this blog (also on Facebook and elsewhere) as

I am a building surveyor, sailor and photographer, but not necessarily in that order.

To that list, I can add, father, husband, occasional saxophone player, Friday night curry chef …

My way forward into this assignment, with approval from my tutor, is to produce a series of self-portraits showing some of the different roles I play. I see this as a deadpan, if not totally banal (I still find that a pejorative word) series. My face will be the constant, with my roles signified by clothing and props. This might look derivative of Keith Greenhough’s ‘Iron Man‘ images on p73 of the course notes, but I plan to strip it back further. My first thought is to take inspiration from Richard Avedon’s approach to his ‘The Family‘ and ‘In the American West‘ series, contrasty monochrome against a plain white background, with frontal lighting, leaving his subjects nowhere to hide. It will be a digital effort, not large-format (I have the LF camera but focusing and actuation become a problem with selfies).

I had considered making this a self-absented series, still-lifes of the clothing and props but I think that would be a gimmick too far. Similarly with mirror selfies, which are already clichéd and the gimmick would detract from the meaning of the image.

Potential roles, identified from the diary (in order of appearance, not importance) are:

• Building surveyor (‘the day job’)
• Photographer
• Photography student (assuming I can differentiate it from ‘photographer’)
• Video/DVD watcher (is that a role?)
• Rotarian (really unsure how to show that)
• Reader of books (again, is it a role?)
• Saxophone player (well, I make noises that I like)
• Cryptic crossword solver
• Occasional cook (top of cooker only, not oven)
• Sailor and basic dinghy instructor
• Wrapping wife’s birthday presents (on the day!)

No guidance or prescription on how many images are wanted in the set. I think 5-6 would be plenty. I will try some test shots during next week.

Masquerades – Nikki S Lee

Nikki S Lee is an American performance artist of Korean origin. She uses a camera to record her art, but does not consider herself a photographer (Bright 2011,41). Her typical images are a form of self-portraiture, ‘snapshots’ of herself taken by others with simple point-and-shoot cameras. Of her two major bodies of work, ‘Projects’ is very much a masquerade exercise and ‘Parts’, although apparently more self-referential , is still a performance of sorts. More recently, she has branched into film; ‘AKA Nikki S Lee’ is part documentary and part performance, in which she plays both the documentary-maker and the subject. (reviewed in Kino, 2006 and Davis, s.d.)

‘Parts’ (2002-2005) is the less controversial and easier to describe body of photography. Lee has herself photographed in ‘social snapshot’ situations with different men, prints the image then cuts the man out, leaving just a vestige such as an arm or a hand visible. (slideshow of examples here) Seen individually, these images appear as caricature ‘break-up’ pictures, including the three-sided border which makes it obvious that this is a cut image rather than poor framing. In the AKA film, she gets angry at one exhibition where the borders have been removed before framing in a mistaken attempt to tidy-up the photograph.

When several of the images are viewed together, we see something different. The same face (Lee’s) is matched with differing costumes, make-up and locations and we realise that there is some role-playing (masquerade) going on. Lee tells us (reported by Bright 2011, 41) that these are not break-up pictures but “… show how personal identity is is affected by other people and different kinds of relationships. … You can see that it is one person throughout and that her identity shifts and changes depending on whom she is with”. The use of ‘her’ rather than ‘my’ is significant and suggests that even when interviewed, Lee is role-playing.

‘Projects’ (1997-2001) is a set of interconnected (if only by technique) projects in which Lee adopts a particular group or subculture for a period of weeks or months, attempts to assimilate or blend in, then has herself photographed in persona with group members, by members of the group or passers-by, in the same snapshot aesthetic noted earlier. As before, individual images are unremarkable but viewing multiple images makes the role-play and deeper questions more obvious.

At the surface level, we are tempted to play a version of ‘Where’s Wally’, to identify Lee in each image. Her distinctively oriental features make this easier in groups where there is a racial stereotype (the WASPs of ‘The Yuppie Project’ or the African-Americans of ‘The Hip-Hop Project’ for example) and part of the controversy around her work comes from reviewers dealing with perceived racism (eg. Berger 2001 and Kim 2016)

There are challenges in attempting to fit the group visually. In ‘The Schoolgirl Project’,  going back to Korea helps with facial features but Lee is noticeably older than the group. At the other end of the scale, she had to wear a mask and/or heavy make-up for ‘The Seniors Project‘ (it is reported that the group members ‘thought she was an elderly crackpot and gently humoured her’ (Cotter 1999)). It is her use of blackface in ‘The Hip-Hop Project’ that particularly attracts Kim’s venom.

Any masquerade project (apart from obvious drama in a formal theatrical setting, when we know what to expect) is going to be controversial, with accusations of voyeurism or exploitation. The language used by reviewers is interesting. The more neutral reviewers say little about the process by which Lee joins her groups; however Dalton (2000) who appears generally approving, refers to Lee ‘befriending’ the group, whereas Seamon (2011, reviewing Smith) in a book review says that Lee “… ingratiated herself with various subcultures …”.

The images appear primarily as a comment on the nature and identity of the group she is working with. Group members appear as subjects in the photographs, and Lee has either done her research or spent time assimilating in order to blend in as well as she does. Whether they comment Lee’s own identity is problematic. Clearly she is there, but my own reading is that she is playing a part. Ultimately, these are film stills with Lee as one of the actors.

References

Berger, M. (2001) ‘Picturing whiteness: Nikki S. Lee’s Yuppie Project’. Art Journal 60 (3), pp.54-57.

Bright, S. (2011) Art Photography Now.. revised edn. London, UK: Thames & Hudson.

Cotter, H. (1999) ART IN REVIEW; Nikki S. Lee [online] Available at <http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/10/arts/art-in-review-nikki-s-lee.html&gt; [Accessed 15/10/2017].

Dalton, J. (2000) ‘Look at Me: Self-Portrait Photography after Cindy Sherman’. Performing Arts Journal 22 (3), pp.47-56.

Davis, B. (s.d.) Cultural Karaoke [online] Available at <http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis10-24-06.asp&gt; [Accessed 15/10/2017].

Kim, E. (2016) Nikki S. Lee’s “Projects”—And the Ongoing Circulation of Blackface, Brownface in “Art” [online] Available at <http://contemptorary.org/nikki-s-lees-projects-and-the-ongoing-circulation-of-blackface-brownface-in-art/&gt; [Accessed 15/10/2017].

Kino, C (2006) Now in Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee [online] Available at <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/design/01kino.html?ex=1317355200&en=ba68cca87c7383c1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&gt; [Accessed 15/10/2017].

Smith, C. (2011) Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper and Anna Deavere Smith, Durham NC: Duke University Press [reviewed by Seamon, M. in unidentified journal]

Self-portraits – examples and comments

Self-portraits in one form or another are all around us. The smartphone ‘selfie’ is one of the defining features of our age, having an OED entry and an example in the Time 100 list. Many of these appear on social media every day and my general impression is that they are narcissistic, sometimes honest but mostly presenting a glamourised version of the poster’s life, particularly of their holidays and hobbies. The messages contained in the images are “I am/was here”, “I have done this” or just “Look at me”. Even the art-world-canonised Francesca Woodman was not above this kind of thing, ‘Me and my Room-mate‘ is a straight cheesecake celebration of being young and beautiful.

Self-portrait has been used to express deeper ideas. The course notes give two examples, the works of Francesca Woodman and Elina Brotherus (in my view, Gillian Wearing does not count as self-portraiture, for reasons previously noted). Woodman was experimenting with fairly abstract ideas, and used herself as a model “because I am always available”. A lot of Brotherus’ self-portraiture work, particularly ‘Annonciation’ is autobiographical so the self-portrait format is a given. In the case of ‘Annonciation’, nakedness in some images is entirely appropriate – the series describes a process (infertility treatment) that the most intimate parts of her body were being subjected to, so it is reasonable to show that body.

Sean O’Hagan (2013) came up with a list of ‘the 10 best photographic self-portraits’ which is necessarily subjective. It includes one from Woodman and one from Wearing, but he overlooks Brotherus. Six of the ten are self-indulgent to some degree – the images are intended to represent the author. The most disturbing of these is Giles Duley’s ‘Becoming the Story: Self-portrait, 2011‘, also known as the ‘Broken Statue’, showing Duley following a triple amputation after a landmine explosion; he has, literally, become the story and the image is an honest depiction of the kind of damage these weapons can do.

John Coplans’ ‘Back with Arms Above’ (1984) uses the body to create an abstract image. Unlike, say Bill Brandt, who created abstract nudes using models, Coplans has used his own body presumably because, like Woodman, it was available.

Trish Morrissey, like Gillian Wearing, photographs herself (or is photographed) in character as other people. The difference is that we see her own face and body. For instance, in the series ‘Front’ (2005-2007) she found families on the beach and replaced one female family member (changing clothes with her) who then took the photograph. Viewing this series, and others, it is disconcerting to see the same face cropping up. These works play with the nature of identity and of family album photograph.

We are asked whether these images would  ‘work’ for an outsider without any accompanying text. As so often, the answer is “it depends”. In a single image, without explanation, it would not be obvious that we are seeing a self-portrait. When looking at a series, such as ‘Annonciation‘ or ‘Front’ it is obvious that the same person appears in all the images and we know that we are looking either at a model or a self-portrait. In the case of ‘Front’, the appearance of the same face in multiple contexts is particularly thought-provoking. It is interesting that Morrisey’s series’ are presented without text (other than image titles) on her website. Whether further explanatory text is required depends on your view of the photographer/subject/viewer triangle and on who is responsible for extracting the meaning from the image.

Reference

O’Hagan, S (2013) The 10 best … photographic self-portraits [online] Available at <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/23/10-best-photographic-self-portraits > [Accessed 1/10/2017].

Self-portraits – Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing is a conceptual artist who uses photography or video to record her / her subjects’ performances. Her breakthrough piece “Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992-93)” is an exercise in breaking through the perception of English reserve. The device of having subjects hold up a piece of paper expressing their innermost thoughts has penetrated popular culture to the extent of becoming a scene in Richard Curtis’ film ‘Love Actually‘ (2003).

She continued to explore the theme of emotional honesty and confessional with the videos ‘Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian.‘ (1994), ‘Secrets and Lies‘ (2009) and ‘Trauma‘(2010) in which her subjects’ anonymity is protected by masks bought from a fancy-dress shop.

Masks are the major feature in Wearing’s so-called self-portraits, several of which can be found in the Maureen Paley online gallery. The set referred to in the course notes is ‘Album‘ (2003) in which she recreates images of her family members from various photo albums. She has also portrayed herself as some of her artist-heroes, such as Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe and, earlier this year an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (Searle 2017) in which she parallels the mask-disguise work of Claude Cahun.

A common feature of all of these works is the thick silicone masks that Wearing wears, usually only her eyes disconcertingly  visible through deliberately rough-cut holes, and this is where I find myself in difficulty with the definition of ‘self-portrait’. Unlike the work of Cindy Sherman, who is recognisably herself, whatever persona she is portraying in her images, Wearing’s mask images appear more as disguise than self-portrait.

Wearing explains the process of creating the masks and the photographs in an extended Guardian piece (Wearing 2012). These are thick silicone masks, created by a mask-maker with training from Madame Tussauds, intended to remove the contours of Wearing’s face  and almost every other piece of visible skin. This image is of the mask representing her sister, and includes coverage of the throat as well as the face.

This is taken to extremes in the image portraying Wearing’s brother, Richard, naked from the waist up and combing his hair. The torso, described as a body mask, is several inches thick and causes me to ask at what stage does something cease to be a mask and become a piece of sculpture in its own right. I have to conclude with a personal opinion that these images are not self-portraits at all and may not even be disguise, but that Wearing is using her body as an armature for a piece of sculpture created by (and presumably photographed by) somebody else. She is the mastermind behind a production team and a piece of performance art, but she appears to have more in common with Gregory Crewdson than with Elina Brotherus.

References

Maureen Paley (s.d.) Gillian Wearing [online] Available at <https://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/gillian-wearing&gt; [Accessed 1/10/2017].

Searle, A (2017) A ghost in kiss curls: how Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun share a mask [online] Available at <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/08/gillian-wearing-claude-cahun-mask-national-portrait-gallery&gt; [Accessed 1/10/2017].

Sooke, A (2012) Gillian Wearing: Everyone’s got a secret [online] Available at <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9149522/Gillian-Wearing-Everyones-got-a-secret.html&gt; [Accessed 1/10/2017].

Wearing, G (2012) Gillian Wearing takeover: behind the mask – the Self Portraits [online] Available at <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/27/gillian-wearing-takeover-mask&gt; [Accessed 1/10/2017].

Self-portraits – Elina Brotherus

It is not clear why the author of the course notes picked two nude self-portraits of Elina Brotherus as illustrations. While most of her work (Brotherus, 2016) includes the photographer as her own model, she is fully-clothed for the majority of it.

Elina Brotherus (b 1972) is a Finnish photographer, now based in Finland and France.  “I was left with this idea of what adults do,” she says. “They do chemistry and if that doesn’t work, they study art. So that’s what I did.” (quoted by Sherwin, 2010). In this she is modest, having gained both an MSc in chemistry and an MA in photography. At the time of Sherwin’s Guardian article, she was best known for her landscape and figure-in-landscape. Her autobiographical photography came later and reflects an earlier period, including the ‘Das Mädchen sprach von Liebe’ and the Model Studies series.

There are differences between Brotherus’ work and that of Francesca Woodman. With Brotherus, I get a much stronger impression of narrative, within individual images and in the series. And, of course, Woodman denied herself the opportunity to mature as a photographer.

The link between Brotherus’ early and late periods of autobiographical work is illustrated in the series ‘12 ans après‘ (12 Years Later) made in 1999 and 2011-13. During a period as artist-in-residence to the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, she made the series ‘Suites françaises’ showing herself learning French with the aid of Post-it notes stuck to parts of her guesthouse rooms. Returning to teach a workshop in 2011, she stayed in the same guesthouse and recorded many of the same places and scenes; the two sets of images creating a dialogue across the years.

Unlike, say, Cindy Sherman whose self-portraits have an air of artifice and glamour, Brotherus is brutally honest about herself and her emotions. Probably the most personal series is ‘Annonciation‘, made between 2009 and 2013, dealing with five years of unsuccessful infertility treatment and her final acceptance of involuntary childlessness.

Annonciation 9, She would go to Anne-Sophie’s school (source: elinabrotherus.com)

Broken up into years by facsimile diary pages, the series charts a progress through hope, despair and tears to a form of acceptance, a female figure with her back to camera in the middle of a snowy landscape.

As a sort of follow-up, ‘Carpe Fucking Diem‘ (2011-15) “… is an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of life for a future that is not what I imagined it to be”. Shot partly in parallel with ‘Annonciation‘ and partly in the two years afterward, the series takes Brotherus from those depths to a new surreal view of things around her. In her own words, “I don’t have children so I don’t need to adopt any preconceived role of an adult. I can give normality the finger. Carpe Fucking Diem is also about inventing strange games for the playground of the camera.”

Reference

Asbæk, M (s.d.) Elina Brotherus [online] Available at <http://www.martinasbaek.com/Artists/Elina-Brotherus&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Brotherus, E (2016) Elina Brotherus [online] Available at <http://www.elinabrotherus.com&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Sherwin, S (2010) Artist of the week 104: Elina Brotherus [online] Available at <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/sep/08/artist-week-elina-brotherus-photography&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Self-portraits – Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman committed suicide in 1981, at the tragically young age of 22, having failed a suicide attempt the previous year (Wikipedia, 2017). There, I’ve said it – as has pretty much every reviewer of her work that I have read; most use it as their starting point, or even as the central theme for discussing Woodman’s work. I find myself questioning the standard analysis (that her photography indicated a troubled mind and foreshadowed her suicide) as being just to trite, too ‘easy’. She had, after all, been photographing since the age of 13 – almost half of her short lifetime, and I doubt that she was suicidal for all that time.

Indeed, some recent commentaries (Gumport 2011, Salter 2012, Keiffer 2016) suggest that Woodman was self-aware and ambitious, with depression only entering the story around 1980 as a result of lack of recognition, refusal of funding, and a failed relationship.

I also wonder about discussing Woodman’s work as a completed oeuvre. Clearly, it is ‘complete’ in the sense that there will be no more of it but a majority of the images I have found online are from her high school and student days (up to late 1978) and have the look of student experiment, cutting loose with subject matter and camera techniques. I suggest that we are looking at the juvenilia of a potentially great artist, tragically unrealised.

Woodman’s photographs (and some surviving video) are varied and fascinating. Almost all feature human figures, herself or other young models/students and in many of them, the use of long exposures has blurred the body almost out of recognition. A large proportion feature nudity (so public display of anything pre-1976 is problematic) or vintage costume, both of which contribute to a timeless (or outside-of-time) quality.

According to Kate Salter, Woodman says the reason for taking so many self portraits was ‘It’s a matter of convenience – I am always available.’ (quoted in Salter 2012)

It is Woodman’s blurred images (examples here and here) that have attracted most comment – probably because of the association with self-effacement, disappearance and her eventual suicide. However, her sharper images in which she gazes direct to camera seem (to me) to say more about the artist herself. ‘Me and My Roomate, Boulder, Colorado‘  is straight cheesecake, a reminder of happy student days. An untitled image from the ‘Polka Dots‘ collection, and the well-known Providence, Rhode Island ,1976 show a wary, slightly haunted expression in images with surreal elements. In contrast, in ‘From a Series on Angels, Rome, Italy 1977‘ she wears a rather stern and slightly intimidating expression.

Overall, a complex character and a great loss of potential, but interpreting her work as presaging her suicide is just too simplistic.

References

Gumport, E  (2011) The Long Exposure of Francesca Woodman [online] Available at <http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/24/long-exposure-francesca-woodman/&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Keiffer, M (2016) Haunted Genius: The Tragic Life and Death of Francesca Woodman [online] Available at <https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/articles/haunted-genius-the-tragic-life-and-death-of-francesca-woodman/&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Salter, K (2102) Blurred genius: the photographs of Francesca Woodman  [online] Available at <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9279676/Blurred-genius-the-photographs-of-Francesca-Woodman.html&gt; [Accessed 30/9/2017].

Wikipedia (2017) Francesca Woodman [online] Available at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman&gt; [Accessed 13/9/17].