Format

Although I rarely take photographs in a 'street photography' style, I do find it interesting to see these images. I find photography festivals interesting after going to the Biennal in Brighton and seeing some really amazing things, it seemed only logical to also visit Derby.

After visiting the format festival in Derby,
only one piece of work really stuck in my mind.

Anthony Carr 

A Month of Nights, Derby

Makeshift time lapse pinhole cameras produce a nocturnal record of life in the city that show traces of its inhabitants. A FORMAT 2011 commission.

I did like the images based on how they look. As you can see in the one above the images are typical of pinhole photography in that they have a wide angled perspective on the scene. I love the little specks of light which look messy in comparison the normal night photography.

I really like how the aesthetic of film is clearly visible and find this much more special than digital images.

But what captured me most about the idea was the concept. In the museum, the room had been layed out with large pieces of wood, with wooden holes in that you looked through to see the image. As if you actually were a bird looking out.

I found this really interesting. It relates mildly to surveillance, a topic we looked into in our lecture series, as you begin to imagine yourself in the birdbox yourself, which is effectively an artistic version of a CCTV camera.

A lovely idea to see things from the point of view of birds.

Laura Mulvey

A lady who I looked at when researching my essay was Laura Mulvey who has been described as a 'feminist film theorist'.


"Laura Mulvey did not undertake empirical studies of actual filmgoers, but declared her intention to make ‘political use’ of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship" This referenced work is included in my previous blog post about Lacan.


Although Mulvey's intention was to analyse cinema, her thoughts and comments directly relate to photographer and to my essay where the images I used were shot in a cinematic 'film stills' style. 


The quotes I have used in this blog post are from an article I found online, written by Daniel Chandler, which I found extremely interesting and helpful when I was researching my essay. 


"Mulvey argues that various features of cinema viewing conditions facilitate for the viewer both the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen. She declares that in patriarchal society ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’ (Mulvey 1992, 27). This is reflected in the dominant forms of cinema. Conventional narrative films in the ‘classical’ Hollywood tradition not only typically focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but also assume a male spectator. ‘As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence’ (ibid., 28). Traditional films present men as active, controlling subjects and treat women as passive objects of desire for men in both the story and in the audience, and do not allow women to be desiring sexual subjects in their own right. Such films objectify women in relation to ‘the controlling male gaze’ (ibid., 33), presenting ‘woman as image’ (or ‘spectacle’) and man as ‘bearer of the look’ (ibid., 27). Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at. The cinematic codes of popular films ‘are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego’ (ibid., 33). It was Mulvey who coined the term 'the male gaze'."


I find this paragraph one of the most interesting out of the analysis. Chandler mentions ideas of Berger (women as sights) which interweaves with Mulvey's opinions. 
This whole piece of text directly relates to my essay. In particular it relates to the main photograph I have tried to analyse within my essay. 

This photograph, shot by Annie Leibovitz is a perfect example of the comments made by Mulvey. It shows the objectification of the model as she walks along the train carriage and also the 'narcissistic process of identification' as not coincidentally the woman is strikingly beautiful and as spectators we can see that she is being stared at appreciatively by the man. We are in awe of her but we are also jealous of the attention she is getting and imagine ourselves in her shoes in an attempt to vicariously receive some of this confidence and attention. The woman practically glows in the male gaze.


Men can also relate to the protagonist as wanting to have the same control over women, having them parade in front of them and the wanting the gratifying power of the male gaze. Which is shown by the man sitting comfortably and confidently while the woman walks past him and is looked at. The feature was in a predominantly female magazine (Vogue) though so I believe it is unlikely that men will identify with the image in the magazine although I believe they would if it was in another context, an advert/billboard for example. 

Jacques Lacan

An introduction......




"The symbolic: a term used by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and by the literary theorist Julia Kristeva to designate the objective order (sometimes called the Symbolic Order) of language, law, morality, religion, and all social existence, which is held to constitute the identity of any human subject who enters it. Drawing on Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex and on the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi‐Strauss, Lacan developed an opposition between the ‘Imaginary’ state enjoyed by the infant who has no distinct sense of a self opposed to the world, and the Symbolic Order in which the child then becomes a separate subject within human culture. The Symbolic is the realm of distinctions and differences—between self and others, subject and object—and of absence or ‘lack’, since in it we are exiled from the completeness of the Imaginary, and can return to it only in fantasized identifications. The infant's entry into the Symbolic is associated with the ‘splitting’ of the subject by language, which allots distinct ‘subject‐positions’ (‘I’ and ‘you’) for us to occupy in turn. In Kristeva's literary theory, the Symbolic is opposed to the disruptive energies of the semiotic, which have their source in the Imaginary state."

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/the-symbolic#ixzz1Gf5X4Sxz


























I did a lot of reading on this website: http://www.iep.utm.edu/lacweb/#SH2d
it is well worth a look and has very detailed information on Lacan's different theories.


"what Lacan calls a symbolic identification with an “ego ideal.” This is precisely identification with and within something that cannot be seen, touched, devoured, or mastered: namely, the words, norms and directives of its given cultural collective. Symbolic identification is always idenification with a normatively circumscribed way of organising the social-intersubjective space within which the subject can take on its most lasting imaginary identifications: (For example, the hysterical-vulnerable female identifies at the symbolic level with the patriarchal way of structuring social relations between sexes, outside of which her imaginary identification would be meaningless)."


This quote, especially the bottom part, directly relates to the subject I was investigating within my essay of women's perceived roles within society. In other words, Lacan is describing the process that we go through psychologically when fitting into roles within society. He makes the point that this is completely of our doing and by using the word 'imaginary'. His views seem to suggest that it is our imaginations which forms these roles within society and this act in turn leads to the forming of society and the way it acts. It is almost like a circle and involves the hyper-real as it is difficult to determine whether it is societies roles that we fit into, or us making up the roles ourself, or possibly both. Almost a which came first, chicken or egg scenario...

Artist's Statement

Alice’s photographic practice tends to revolve around the two main elements of garden and floral photography and the genre of fine art. These elements interweave with images of places Alice has visited to create a collection of images involved with aestheticism and beauty.

Alice’s images focus on the ‘found’. they are natural and not usually preconcieved, produciing a snapshot of a place of moment in time Alice has found to be beautiful.

When photographing personal work Alice becomes immersed in the world around her and uses her camera to capture there moments and places.

She finds solace and comfort in producing these images and it acts as a theraputic practice, resulting in images reflecting the comfort she finds in these surroundings.

Continuing the process by surrounding herself with these images in her own home. A constant reminder of the beauty in the world. 

Alice enjoys using old photographic techniques such as film processing and using the darkroom. She always uses film for personal work and enjoys using slightly unusual cameras such as disposable and lomography alongside her collection of vintage cameras.

Alice's commercial practice deals with the same subject matter but is dealt with in a different photographic way. Alice shows her technical skills and nearly always uses film, capturing large amounts of detail with control over levels of focus.