Exercise - Visualise a Poem.

One of my memories as a child was having to read world war one poems as part of a history class. I remember well the lingering sadness and emotions these poems brought to me. 

One of the poems that stuck with me to this day is Suicide in the Trenches"  by Siegfried Sassoon, written during his First World War military service and published in his 1918 collection: Counter-Attack and Other Poems  

This poem, is one of the many poems Sassoon composed in response to World War I and raises questions on the politics of war and its ultimate affect on the human being. 

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy  

Who grinned at life in empty joy,  Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,  And whistled early with the lark. 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,  With crumps and lice and lack of rum,  He put a bullet through his brain.  No one spoke of him again. 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye  Who cheer when soldier lads march by,  Sneak home and pray you'll never know  The hell where youth and laughter go. 

 Visual Interpretation. 

While thinking this through I decided to use photographs from both sides in World war 1; I wanted to keep the images as close to the concept of the text as possible.  I could have chosen more modern images, for example I could have used this image which is from Don McCullin. His war photography, echoes this soldiers emotional emptiness.  

1.

But I wanted to keep the emotion of the poem as close to the historical events as possible. While working of the exercise  I chose to break the poem down into separate parts as I wanted to give examples of what it brings to my mind. 

I knew a simple soldier boy  Who grinned at life in empty joy,  

  2.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,  With crumps and lice and lack of rum,  

3.

He put a bullet through his brain.  No one spoke of him again 

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4.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye  Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 

5.

Sneak home and pray you'll never know  The hell where youth and laughter go. 

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6.

I choose not to call Shell Shock PTSD or combat fatigue as I believe just like George Carlin that it removes the real pain from the condition and hides the truth. 

For those who do not know what George said, here is a direct quote from part of a performance from him, it is called Euphemisms;. 

"I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that.  There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.  In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.  That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue.  Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.  Then of course, came the war in Vietnam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.  I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha." 

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1. Tate.org.uk. (2017). Don McCullin. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/tate-modern-mobile/conflict-time-photography/mccullin/moments [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

2. http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/shell-shocked-soldier-1916/

3. Pinterest. (2017). Journey's End. [online] Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/lee9794/journeys-end/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

4. Densford, D., Densford, D. and Densford, D. (2017). Suicide | The Chaplain Kit. [online] Thechaplainkit.com. Available at: https://thechaplainkit.com/tag/suicide/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

5. Firstworldwar.com. (2017). First World War.com - Home Front. [online] Available at: http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/homefront2.htm [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

6. En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Chemical weapons in World War I. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

7. Ptsdcombat.blogspot.co.uk. (2017). A George Carlin Classic on Combat PTSD | PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within. [online] Available at: http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/george-carlin-classic-on-combat-ptsd.html [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].











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Project 2: Image and Text

What: Examine and document an Image with differing text captions
Where: Home

When: Morning and Afternnons

How: I first reviewed the coursework and played around with a few ideas and images.

The first image is from the Standing Rock protests. Whilst the protest was in the international news there was as far as I could see little interest in the actual people protesting and the situation on the ground from an impartial point of view. However the situation was highlighted by Dee Snider, singer of Twisted Sister, when he took to social media to voice his anger at the civil rights and human rights issues as well as his anger at his son and the film crew being tear gassed while documenting the situation.

https://www.facebook.com/facedeesnider/videos/1379599582050312/

Man on horse looking downhill at security and police 

  

Lone protester


 

Cause for concern for rights violations by security forces


  

Calm day of protest 

Quiet day at Standing rock 

Police continue to face protest

Here I found that the caption text could influence (re-contextualise) the image. It could be used to either politicise the situation or show that it was blown out of context. 

The second image I used was a more neutral image as I wanted to see if I could give differing perspectives of the image.

Small business improvements by government policy

Broadbamd expansion to continue by BT.

Nuisance Call centres to be  brought under control

Concern about UK workers work life balance

Conclusion: I was surprised how easily an image can be "unbalanced" and its perspective changed by something as simple as a caption. This means that I must think harder on how I caption my own images as I could easily re-conceptualise the image by accident.

Image with Text - pre exercise.

As I worked towards this exercise, I at first scored the newspapers that my wife brought home whenever she managed to pick one up on the bus, I found little of interest in the stores and the images were invariably surrounded or interfered with by blocks of text tight and captions within the image itself.

I fell back to browsing the news via a tablet and examining the images produced for usable images.

I came across the following image and I could not remove myself from the interpretation of the image. Every time |I look at the image I start to peer closer and closer into the image examining and reading the image for subtext.

The caption I started with was "politicians meet to discuss future" or  "a meeting of minds"  However once I started to examine the image I started to notice certain elements within.

• The men are dining in a exclusive restaurant with fine tablecloths, silver flower decorations and low light giving an impression of not only exclusivity but privacy.

• Romney appears surprised and embarrassed almost as if her did not expect the press to be present and is surprised by the photographer. The tile of the image also helps in giving the image an almost paparazzi feel.

• Trump leans forward into the image, acknowledging the camera with a knowing expression as if had carefully stage managed the image and the photographer had jumped from a large cake.

• Both men are drinking water but there appears to be a bottle of wine chilling in the background.

Romney's starter is untouched and Trumps has been pushed away across the table and has been replaced with what appears to be a large breakfast bowl and a serving spoon.

The irony of the image is that Romney and Trump were both in contention for the same political party nomination for President and both men took to the press and to the internet to shame and deride one another. Now that the dust has settled, this image speaks to note that not only has Romney had to eat humble pie and crow but also his dignity in the chase for continued power, and this image shows that not only did Romney not expect the photo to be taken but he has been caught red handed "dealing with the devil"

The country Doctor, The Dad Project

The Country Doctor

Smith cleverly shot with no film initially so that the doctor would not only get used to his presence but also would become familiar with and then ignore the sound of the shutter.

The project documents the life of the Dr Ceriani, the project only last 23 days but in appearance seems to cover a longer stretch of time. While following the doctor, Smith was able to capture the work of Dr Ceriani as he helped the community. It is especially telling, when during a short break away from his duties, where he tries to relax and fish, he is called back to attend to an emergency. It is one of these shots that calls out to me as it expresses the helplessness feeling that Dr Ceriaini is having as he struggles to find a way to telling the family that although he has done all that he can it is not enough and that the girls eye cannot be saved.

 

W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The county Doctor is a uncompromising document which shows the life of the community and the hard but rewarding work of DR Ceriani.

Personally I prefer Smiths harder hitting photo essay Nurse Midwife, which documents Maude Callens work as an all encompassing health worker for the desperately poor of the rural south.

Cosgrove, B. (2013) W. Eugene Smith’s landmark photo essay, ‘nurse midwife’. Available at: http://time.com/26789/w-eugene-smith-life-magazine-1951-photo-essay-nurse-midwife/ (Accessed: 20 November 2016).

The Dad Project

The milkshake moment:

The image talks to me on multiple levels, it demonstrates the failing health on her father, suddenly losing his balance and dropping the milkshake, the splatter on the floor the colour of dried blood, the loss of the required energy drink which is the lifeblood of her father, something to try and increase his strength and this resistance to the effects of the cancer on his life.

Grappling with the plan; how to manage the project, Briony struggles with how to manage the concept and the documentation of the subject, does she plan what she will shoot, will she stuck to a methodology. In the end, she decides to documentation what she can as neither method nor pan would allow her the flexibility that she really needed to document the ongoing situation.

The main difference between the two essays is the emotional narrative within the overall context of the essay. The country doctor gives you an insight into the overall activities and situations that the doctor has to attend to and how this affected the many people that he comes into contact with. The My Dad essay is a much closer, emotionally guided narrative of just three people, it also has a beginning, middle and end narrative but at the same time leaves the viewer with some insight into how the narrative will continue to play out as the intense emotions captured effect each of the individuals left at the end of the essay. 

Certainly for me the My Dad project brought some memories and emotions back t the loss of my father and the ongoing loss of my mother to dementia 

  

Endng with ending; Brionys work has allowed her to express not only her feelings, but process them in a manner that grants the viewer a level of empathy with Briony. The Dad project is only the start of the project, the journey is really has just begun as others see it for the first time and their reactions and feelings interact with Brionys own.

Research Points for Assignment 1

In my attempt to keep the assignment 1 word count down to the advised limit, I failed to include enough information on where my ideas originated and how I worked on them to produce the submitted images. My tutor advised me to include more details on what I was thinking and what my influcences were.

I decided to use the opposites of heaven and hell or demon and angel to support the principles of opposite. Being influenced by the front cover of the Black Sabbath album, I wanted to produce two distinct separate images, I could as the album image portrays did it in a single image but I wanted to enforce the two separate images principle.

For the Demon I first started with the traditional idea of a crone witch; I did not want to do a traditional witch so went with something closer to a Gothic witch. The first idea was to have the model with a large lace head covering, with the covering going from hear forehead and falling away at the back and sides over her shoulders. Her face was to be dual coloured running in a gradient with it changing too pure white just at her eyes.

I was attempting to obtain a other worldliness without going to Halloween, however the idea failed as the head covering did not look right and I was using a lens with a ring flash which itself was cropping into the picture reducing the available frame.

When I was reviewing the images I took, I then thought of the idea of a demon, but again I did not want to produce a cliche cartoon Halloween image. I decided that I would go with a mode modern look which was as otherworldly as possible but try to stay away from the ethereal. I wanted the demon to be as striking as possible. I then went with the influences of Japanese and Korean horror films, such as “The Ring”, “Ju-On The Grudge”, “The Eye” and “Kairo”. In these films the ghosts and demons have a stylised, mainly din plain pale colours with dark hair and ringed dark eyes. 

However I wanted the model to wear dark clothing to help isolate her face and unlike the ghost spirits of “The Ring” I did not want her hair draped over covering her face.

I used these ideas with the model by using black and white face paints and having her put in black eye contacts to cover the blue of her eyes, I then had her darken the top part of her face to enhance the darkness and give the impression that she was part of the darkness that surrounded her. I then pushed in close to her face with the camera using a prime 50 mm lens and the ring flash to get a close up without getting the ring flash highlight in her eyes. I shot her looking into the camera to show that she was aware of being photographed and that she was making direct contact with the viewer and unsettle them slightly.

Having captured this image, I then turned to the Heaven image. At first I examined the idea of using a modern angel, but I did not find the results satisfactory; the simple descriptions I came up with were too cartoon and almost Christmas like. After discussing this with my wife, I went back to the drawing board again with the idea of again making the image opposite by going back into the history of art and looking for a more renaissance influence but without the wings and the halo. My first idea was to draw together elements from different images, such as the hair from Leonardo Da’Vincis  “Head of an angel” and the dress from Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis “Angel in green with a Vielle”.

While I was reviewing these images, my wife showed me an image taken of Dame Gladys Cooper,

I then started to use this as another influence and looked at photos of Mary Pickford especially the Roses portrait and 

and images of English Victorian Actress Mary Fealy.

All these images were then again influenced by the work of Julia Margaret Cameron.

Pulling these ideas together I decided that I wanted a more natural image, based on the combination of both renaissance and Victorian imagery. 

I had the model style her hair up framing her face with a crown of flowers to represent her oneness with nature, I also shot against a large hedge in natural light all to show that the model was in a natural environment. I took the final image and recoloured it with sepia tones as I thought that monochrome was too stark. I had the model look away from the camera lens while being bare shouldered as I was influenced by the renaissance artists and I wanted her to be viewed more of as a subject while not making the image voyeuristic. I wanted the viewer to see her as nature as a desirable state or entity rather than see her as a female subject of desire.

Assignment 1

How: I started the assignment with the idea of producing a number of social profile images showing different personality traits, however this did not work out as the ideas which looked good on paper did not gel when I tried to create the actual images.

Deciding to go with a different idea, I based the assignment submission on the idea of heaven and hell; taking the original idea from the  front cover of the Black Sabbath album of the same name where the image drawn by Lynn Curlee 

This image itself was inspired from a 1928 photograph of some amateur actors and actresses dressed as angels sitting during a rehearsal break. In this image they are sitting in an unangelic manner smoking.

I decided to push this a little further and have a more modern demon image for hell and a Victorian inspired image for heaven.

For the demon, I worked with the model using various makeup styles ranging from the 1930s green faced witch to the oriental dark haired ghost. The main issue I had was with the lace hat merging with the hair of the model making her head an angular mass rather than two separate distinct shapes. By accident I look a close up which when reviewed pushed me towards the J-Horror image of a demon/ghost with a white face and dark wet hair, we decided on black contact lenses to increase the other-worldliness of the final image.

Hell - Demon

 

For heaven I bounced around the idea of a model angel with white wings and a halo but decided to backtrack to a Victorian representation of a more renaissance style image of a flower crowned individual. I decided to shoot outside in natural light, this time to help create a image with less harsh contrast. This colour image was then recoloured to a sepia image and the trees in the background burnt slightly to remove the distraction of the background, which may have pulled the eyes away from the foreground.

Heaven - Angel (Nature)

Conclusion

I did find this a bit of a struggle as I bounced back and forth between ideas and concepts. I did get a little distracted at first but after nailing down what I wanted to produce the final images were created quickly.

False Image

What: Create a false Image digitally
Where: Home

When: Mid afternoon 

How: I first reviewed the coursework and played around with a few ideas.

At first I had planned on creating an image of myself levitating off the ground, however I just could not arrange all the parts together single-handedly in the end, My first attempts may have worked but it was taking too much time to organise and shoot.

I then went back to the drawing board and while reviewing some images I remembered an image of the landscape around Loch Lomond. Drawing on that as the basis of the image, I first of all toyed with a "nessy" style image but I just thought that it was too cliche and too lazy an idea, Going back to the drawing board I then photographed a toy Godzilla that I had sitting around and used that instead.



I then cropped the image down and removed the background and used the same image to distort and recoloured to make the shadow.

I then used a piece of cloud and a pierce of water and distorting them both created the small bow wave at the front and sides.




Finally compositing them together to produce the final image.



Conclusion.

I found this exercise quite fun as the main part of it was to produce such a false image that it could not be mistaken for a real image at all.