Author: Eilidh Mcgee

new statement of intent

(click on the pictures for a bigger size)

during the christmas break, not only did i take some time to relax and breathe but i also managed to make some time to go through my recent investigation project, looking through past work and looking at the final major project handbook for the next project. i came to the conclusion that the statement of intent that i created did not represent my projects ambitions to the full intent, and wasn’t impressed of it. the statement of intent and gantt chart needed to be a guide and a reassurance going into the next project, in which i believe my old statement of intent did not show.

i rewrote my statement of intent and create a gantt chart as i believe that it would be helpful for me and my fmp, i hope that i’ll be able to look back on this statement and be guided by it as inspiration and to help show my progress going into the new project.

1 to 1 with rachael

Having my one to one with rachael was super helpful. In this 1 to 1, we not only went through my work but we also had a discussion on the context of my work and how this could progress. It was so interesting to me to hear her understanding and praise for subculture and the rave scene.

Some feedback that I received was that the photography and ideas was great but it would be great if I experimented with different themes and settings that weren’t just rave venues and people dancing, think about trying to make it more personal by thinking about what it means to me. for example, taking photos before/after the rave or outside the rave. Rachael also convinced me that my original idea of having and producing my own zine wouldn’t show the full potential of my idea, she told me that my project is worth being bigger and in peoples faces to ensure that the same passion was seen in the presentation.

Something really interesting that rachael brought up was the idea of using other peoples archives or contribution to ensure that the same theme of unity and passion came across in my final piece. This made me think about my mum’s photobooks from the 80s youth culture taken at events and raves.

Some of the other feedback and inspiration that i took down was:

• Molly mckindoe / city books
• Subculturals theory the subcultures reader.
• Subculture the meaning of style.
• exbition rebel 30 years London fashion.
• The museum of youth culture.
• Free party a folk history

I think my next step is to look into the artist that was recommended and the idea and concept of subculture and how i can make my project more personal to me… what does rave culture mean to me?

dark room workshop

Last thursday, I headed to the photography unit to do a workshop with Rachel to relearn how to create prints out of negatives. At college and secondary school, I had previously learned how to use the dark room but as that was a few years ago, I needed a refresher to remember how to use the dark room. In this workshop we created contact sheets from our negatives to understand how long to expose light to the image for our final printed image.

Throughout thus workshop we learnt about exposure, chemicals, the facilities, filters, sizes and types of paper. To start off the workshop, our first particle was to load up our negative film in the contact sheet holder. Due to not having any black and white negatives, I borrowed one strip of black and white negatives from the photographic unit. I loaded up my contact sheet and placed a photographic glossy piece of paper under the contact sheet template and placed the sheet under the projector. I put the light timer to 10 and with a black piece of card, I covered bit by bit each of the contact sheet each of the contact sheet and slowly made the whole of the contact sheet exposed to the projector. By exposing each section pf the contact sheet this allowed me to see what time exposure worked for the image. In my contact sheet, I also added some of my colour negatives into the contact sheet, beside the borrowed black and white negatives. But as colour negatives were thicker, they needed to be exposed for way longer then black and white negatives in order to achieve a clearer and more textured in the image.

After exposing the contact sheet and developing it, I went through the contact sheet and looked at every photo, to see what worked and what didn’t, going through the photographs to work out what I wanted to work with on my final print. Despite the over exposure in some images, I had decided that I wanted to work with one of my colour negatives as I found that the image with all of the people together would be interesting to see in black and white.

After developing my final print, i experimented with different timings, I found that in one timing it made look too light and not show as much detail but in the other timing it made the background too dark but show details at the front of the crowd. Rachel recommend that when exposing the light to the photographic paper, I should take the same black card that i used for the contact sheet and hold it on top of the people in the back of the photo for around two seconds, this would make the people at the back more stand out.

I defiantly found this workshop very interesting and intriguing especially when i have shown my interest in film photography. I liked that there was a more innovative way of turning my colour negatives into black and white prints.

 

formative with eloise

In this group formative, me and my group shared with each other how our research project is going and any feedback on how to make the project progress. It was interesting to hear other people ideas and see their work. One person in my group was in a similar position where she had no clue what her final outcomes could be but passionately shared her interest in identity. It was nice to hear this as it came as a reassurance this project shouldn’t be a race, its most important to just keep experimenting.

When it came to my turn, I was worried about the little of work in my sketchbook due to having to wait for my 35mm film to be developed. But the feedback that I received was so helpful:

• Rave being homemade and personal.
• Underground aspects, the experiences.
• Minilising social media, what raves and underground culture was like before media.More zines then and now.
• Bootleg tapes 90s raves, merchandise and collectives.
• Photographs senaros, text with photographs explore contexts.
• Nan gouldin, corrin day, female gaze in photography.
• Wolfgang tillmans, early 90s stuff.
• Statement of intent with ghant chart.
• 100 pages, sketchbook limit.
• Blog; weekly reflection, challenges
• Sketchbook; research, experimentation.

My next step is to look more into research and keep on experimenting.

my experience with Bronco ETRS

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recently, booked out a Bronco ETRS annual film camera from the photography unit to further my investigation and experimenting into film photography. My plan was to shoot on black and white film as an experimentation. This camera was new to me but I had previously used manual cameras before. Unfortunately, I believe that this experimentation was unsuccessful due to my own faults.

At first the camera was not allowing me to take images due to putting on the lease wrong but once i had established that i then made the camera to take photos again but wouldn’t allow the number of frames life to go up. With these casualties, I decided to stop as I was waisting film. Despite my negative experience with this camera, I still hope to figure out how to use this camera, my future plan is to book the camera out again but ask for more assistance from the photography team.

scanner workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

Last Wednesday, I headed to the photography unit for a scanner workshop. In this workshop, I learnt how to make my film negatives into high quality digital copies with a scanner, and creating contact sheets with the negative and then taking the digital copies and editing them.

I took the negatives from my film camera that i had captured at some festivals over the summer. I recently got them developed and didn’t realise that I could create my own digital prints with the scanner rather than paying for them to be done, which was great to discover!

With my negatives i placed them front up into the negative holder, ensuring that i held the film by the sides rather than the middle, then clipped the negative holder on to the scanner. The first mistake that i made was i forgot to remove the white inner screen from the top of the inside of the scanner, this meant that when i scanned my images in, all of the scans were dark and showed up black. Once i removed the screen then i was able to visually see the scans of the computer. I then selected the picture that i wanted to select and upload, making sure i changed the output size to a4, so that the image didn’t scan through as a small image, then lastly pressed scan and did this to each negative that i had.

This workshop took a lot of patience and time, despite how simple i thought scanning things would be. Just because richard had expressed to me that the scanner’s program didn’t deal with colour negatives too well, the scanner would play up and show lines on the negatives but with movement and time, i got the result that i was hoping to get.

museum trip.

Last Saturday, I headed to the Tate Modern to look for inspiration for my research module. I found that going to the Tate Modern was very helpful for my project when discovering new artist to inspire me and my work. I knew the areas that’s i was keen to explore but wasn’t sure which ways that I could explore them, meaning that I went to the Tate Modern with a completely open mind.

One of the first artist that I discovered as i entered the museum was Romanian Artist, Geta Brătescu. Her 8mm film, black and white video ‘Hands (For the Eye, the Hand of my Body Draws My Portrait) 1977’ was one of the first pieces of art that i came across. The film shows a pair of the artist own hands, moving restlessly around her studio desk. The video was so simple but yet showed an artistic way of showing perspective and an artists point of view. I liked how Geta relies on the black and white film to create tone and texture for the audience to view. In relation to my project, I have a keen interest in film and moving image, I have expressed how I would like to explore on both areas. When thinking about camera shots, tone and texture, Geta is perfect as inspiration and I would be interested in looking into more of her work.

The next artist that drew my attention was artist, Naufus Ramirez-Figueora and his work “Blue Abstraction, 2012”, The work features a high definition video of a man being painted with blue paint in memory of the artists uncle. Inspired by early black and white films, blue often appeared ghostly white in these, making objects look like they had disappeared.

In relation to the artist uncle, he was an activist and experimental theatre maker who was murdered when Naufus was only six years old. He states “Trauma is something that doesn’t fit

into the narrative of your life, it stands out and how the thing stands out, I expressed it through the neon blue.” Naufus’s work stood out to me as his representation of colours a big responsibility within his video. I love the personal and pepper meaning of the colour and how it is used to represent something so personal to him whilst still referring to old black and white films. In relation to my research and thoughts when thinking about moving image, using colour as a representation in a moving image could make it more personal and meaningful to me.

Liz Johnson Artur was another artist which stood out to me for her documentary style photography which documents the lives of black people from the African Diaspora, celebrating the normal. I was drawn to her work for her realism images that are captured on film photography, I love how each image is naturally composed, showing themes of celebration,

class and identity through series of images, some in colour and some in black and white. I love the way that she captures the subjects identity through a photograph. Liz inspires me as a photographer because I have decided that I enjoy capturing and documenting photographs rather than creating studio based and posed photographs. I love how much identity you can capture within an image. I also loved how Liz’s work was presented. She showcased her images through not only neatly hung picture frames but scrapbooks fill of her images. Which I believe added a more personal touch to the images rather then just presenting them all in photo frames which is something i would love to add into my future work.

jules and dani group tutorial

I had a group reflection with Jules and Dani on our progress with the project, I received helpful feedback and inspiration from them as well as the other students in my group tutorial, which helped motivate my research project even more. I explained to them my progress so far and they recommend looking more into contextual sides to my project, once I explained that I was interested in documentary photography, reality and rave cultures, I was recommended that I should look more into archival photographs, recommending things like:

• The peoples archive (via. instagram)
• British culture archives : riots and gatherings
• Pymca archive
• youth archive.
• Anthony price01.
• Cold archieve.
• Collective joys ;the idea of workship.
• Tara st hill

My next steps are to look more into artist based around my contextual research, maybe create mood boards and reflect on chosen artist and then look into recommended artist research.

group tutorials with eloise.

Today in small groups, we spoke to eloise for guidance and feedback on our thoughts and ideas on the research module. It was interesting to hear other peoples ideas, thoughts and inspiration for this project, i liked how  different and unique everyones thoughts and ideas were, in a way they motivated me more for this project.

I had previously spent the whole night trying to finalise an idea with a theme and concept, so when it came to my turn to share my thoughts and ideas, I was reminded by Eloise that there was no need to force an idea and a concept yet, the module was all about experimenting in the areas that you wanted to- which was great to hear as I was stressing about a concept and an idea. I shared how I was interested in exploring film photography and my interest in experimental film making, as well as making zines also, but my main focus was film photography. I have experimented with film photography a few times in secondary school and college but I slowly backed away from it cause film can tend to be unpredictable. But ever since purchasing a new film camera in the summer, I have enjoyed the process and anticipation of film. The feedback that i received from Eloise, was to work more freely and focus on experimenting and research rather than producing a finalised project.

Year three. Introduction to module.

After my first glance at the handbook previously before my first lesson, I found the handbook rather confusing.. The idea of having an independent project sounds exciting but in a way overwhelming, Coming up with a project with no prompt or theme provided by the tutors. But overall, I am excited as this sounds like a challenging year which I hope to be brought out my comfort zone and explore different challenges. By the end of this project, I hope to come up with a concept which I enjoy and am proud about whilst incorporating my interest into this project to make the project a bit more personal to myself.

The key areas that I am interested are filming, I really enjoyed experimenting with moving image for my editorial project in second year, creating a sequence of images to create tone and aesthetics was enjoyable to see a series of images come alive from the studio.

I am also interested in zines/magagzines, there’s so many areas that I could contribute into a magazine. From my experience with touching on personal events with editorial writing to overall creating photoshoots.

I also wouldn’t mind looking into brands and creating my own clothing brand for a certain audience, I enjoy making trend boards, creating logos and looking social media.

As you can see, I have many options and choices that i could look into. I think my next step would be to narrow down ideas and think of different concepts and how I could add them into my own project. I should also start creating mood boards and mind maps to keep my ideas, inspiration and concepts flowing.