EVALUATION

At the beginning of component 1 I had the intentions of looking at the theories of afterlife and death and how they can be portrayed through art, in the summer I began photographing the human body as I created a link between the distortions of the body to showing a visual representation of the body actually dying. I completed experiments of displaying the photographs being stitched, scratched, ripped and replaced as a starting point of gathering a few ideas as to where the research could take me. After the summer I realised that the distortion of photography was something that I wanted to take further but not regarding the focus of the human body, so, I developed my artist research and felt that surrealist photography was a route that could imaginatively present the ideologies of the scenarios of what happens after life. Not only did I choose to look at surrealist photography artists but I looked at an artist who photographs abandoned locations, even looking at an abandoned location was something that had scared me in the same way that the thought of death and afterlife makes me feel so I wanted to capture that through photos.

 

As I had the intentions of recapturing the loneliness of an abandoned building I developed these small ideas of visually feeling death in an empty location, I completed my first shoot at an abandoned coal mine to understand the concept of photographing an abandoned location, however, at the time there were limitations such as the lighting and the camera quality which effected how I could go further with them. I did not want the last limitations to affect future shoots so I went on a second shoot to actually focus on making a location appear more abandoned than it actually is, I aimed to look for graffiti as I believed that its colours could give me inspiration. However, due to limitations of cost and resources I found it very difficult to continue with digital media and this is because I do not know cut out and distort images on Photoshop.

 

During the second shoot the photographs I had taken were like I had been telling a story as the images incorporated movement and blur, so this gave me another starting point to begin experimenting with the ways I could I use the images as a background to the surrealist collages. This made me re think about ways of approaching surrealism and so I began to look at cutting out images and layering them, thinking about transformation and distortion, and finding different ways of applicating mediums onto a surface to appear like the colours are blending. I found that as I was using different mediums to engage the attention of including colour in my work, the texture that was created by the thickness of particular mediums such as acrylic gave me another reason to really think about colour and texture. At this point I was still taking my first shoot into consideration when new ideas aroused around the concept of actually adding old ‘abandoned’ images in contrast to modern day backgrounds.

 

When I had this idea it changed the way I viewed surrealism as it allowed me to involve collage and my own photographs to my work to create scenarios, I began to do research about artists which incorporate collages of cut out photographs and found that most of the artists included a background feature of an out of space theme. In relation to my genre of the whole idea of surrealism being based around individuals from a past era going to a new life after they die, using the out of space background as part of my theme gave me more reasoning to focus creating surreal

collages where the theme is based around these people being in another dimension where they are still living their life.

I wanted to pursue the experiments of using photographs of my own from as a child because they give a personal representation of memories being in the past, whilst adding juxtaposition to present time if I were still that child. So, with that in mind I started to add them to landscape photographs to create a story, creating a real contrast between the scenarios of modern day photographs in comparison to classical images of me as a child. Moreover, I developed my understanding of adding texture to my work by researching into the photography of planets because I had already been adding images of planets to my work, I became involved in looking at the texture of the planets and how I could bring my piece to life from research books such as ‘Hubble’ or ‘Planets’.

Still looking at ways of incorporating movement and texture together as one I attended a fireworks evening where I photographed the actual movement of the colours forcibly being processed into the sky, this made me re think about the kind of colours I am using within my work and how I could be using more florescent, vibrant tones.

In regards to texture, I had previously experimented with melting plastics over images and that was where the development of finding a definite technique had aroused from, I focused on different ways of building upon the texture and adding them to my collages. My collages were successful in terms of creating surreal collages that present texture in a form of making the composition appear to be 3D, However, I know that my blog still needed to be refined so that the viewer is able to acknowledge the journey throughout this component.

As the experimentation came to an end I were to create a final outcome that would showcase my strongest technique or re-creation of composition, so I have created a piece that explores one of my favourite scenarios which acknowledges the imagery of individuals living in out of space; I believe that the final piece produces a feel for a much more positive aspect to afterlife.