Critical Report

Critical Report

The themes and ideas I have been researching have been rather consistent throughout my work. The main underlying themes have been mistakes and annoyances, explored through a number of artists, articles, facts and figures.

For work to begin, an understanding of narrative structures was needed, and so I researched the most common ones to broaden my knowledge which could then be applied to my own work how I saw fit. A narrative is simply 'the act, process, or skill of telling a story', and I really wanted to have a strengthened, clear story within my work. There was no need to overcomplicate this narrative I would create, and so my images ended up simple, yet direct.

The work was initially meant to have a linear narrative structure with a clear story, however by the end of the project it has fallen into the non linear / decentered category, due to the ambiguity of time within the narrative. The images were taken at different points in time and have been shuffled in their placement within the grid based on how they look all together as a unity, which would suggest a non linear narrative structure.
The narrative structure of my work isn’t overly important to the imagery because it could work in any order, yet the story is still evident within the series.

In class, we looked at multiple artists. Many were not relevant to my own work due to such a wide variety of work being shown, however an artist that really influenced my work and peaked my interest was Duane Michals. His use of sequence and circular narrative is what initially attracted me, however as my work progressed this didn’t become relevant anymore due to the way that I drifted away from the idea of the sequence. However that the meaning behind his work ‘Things are Queer’ has stuck with me and followed through into my final work; the way the message could be ambiguous specifically. Michal’s series was hard to read, and without research I would have had a very different idea over what it’s about. My work, while more obvious is still more fluid is message depending on who is viewing it; I see the work as rather lighthearted and even funny because of the overreactions yet i’ve been told that it feels dark and intense by others.

As I first approached the brief, the intention was to create a lighthearted and humorous narrative within my work. The idea first came from when I dropped my food on the floor, and it ruined my night despite it being a rather small thing in life. Realising that this isn’t something only I experience by talking about my frustration with friends,  I began researching artists such as Sandro Giordano, whose images have a very lighthearted feel at first but when you read into the image are a bit more heavy in tone due to the messages of corruption and the feeling of hitting rock bottom, which is reflected in ‘Ah Shit’; particularly how he shows things that aren’t perfect, and captures when things go wrong. Our work can be linked through this despite the evolution of my work; they both present undesirable situations, they’re both set up situations but carry the feeling of giving up.
A survey by Nurofen Express from 2009 asked people what the most annoying things in life are, and a list was published in the telegraph. This list really inspired the subjects of my images, because I wanted other people other than me to relate to the word I was producing, so they would be able to understand the frustration of these occurrences. The things on this list that ended up being included ‘Getting a parking ticket’ and ‘stepping in chewing gum’. These are all things that I or others in my life have expressed their frustrations towards so I knew that they would work within the series.
I also continued to research other artists who explored the unexpected, mistakes and messes such as Irving Penn, Martin Parr, and Rinko Kawauchi. Irving Penn produced some images of food that is undesirable, ruined but would have otherwise been fine, and my work links with this because the items or subjects shown within the work were perfectly fine before the incident happened; it’s showing the aftermath. Looking at Penn’s work and how he made it look so beautiful was a large inspiration to the final body of work, while not similar, ‘Ah Shit’ is stylistic and not as ugly as the occurrences that are happening within the frame.  Another piece of his work that was influential was one where he set up a bag and splayed the contents on the floor to show the audience a bit about the person who had this happen to them, but not enough to create a full profile of the person. My work is similar to this, you can begin to gather information about the person that all of these incidents are happening but because no face is revealed the identity isn’t completely apparent.

After the research, I decided that overall, the narrative within my work would be about somebody, an unnamed identity, going through all of these annoyances through an unspecified amount of time, each scenario happening after another and building up throughout the series. The lack of identity is to allow a viewer to insert themselves into the environment and to feel the dramatisation of these scenarios happening.

Finding a style was very important to this work in order for the right message to be put across to an audience and to also represent my feelings. I researched work by Melanie Pullen who undoubtedly had the biggest influence on the visual aspect of my work for this project. Her colour toning is dramatic and cinematic and helps emphasise the mood of the image. I had originally planned to have a high saturated, bright type of colouring to the images, influenced by Sandro Giordano and Guy Bourdin, however after editing my first shoot to match this aesthetic I just wasn’t happy with the outcome. The images were re-edited using a more dark, mysterious and cinematic approach inspired by Melanie Pullen, which improved the mood of the images as it emphasised the feeling that I experience when these events happen; it seems so dramatic and important at the time however once the even has passed it seems silly that it had such a big impact on me. This was one of the main points that was important for me to get across to an audience.

To shoot, I decided i’d take my camera everywhere with me to capture the moments as they happened, but after I hadn’t made much work in the first two weeks I decided I had to change this, and so the moments of ‘disaster’ became staged.  While the images perhaps now have less authenticity, it was a good decision or there wouldn’t have been enough work, and the style wouldn’t have been as consistent. The images became cinematic; I first used the in camera flash to have a large contrast in my images, however there wasn’t a strong enough contrast and wasn’t dramatic enough in tone. By the second shoot I had developed a way of shooting that helped me give the images the mysterious, dramatic undertone to the images, by concentrating the source of light, which in combination with the toning of the images gives the image that cinematic look I was after. This gives the image more character and intensity. By the second shoot I felt I didn’t need to change my way of shooting and so this method continued throughout the rest of the time I worked on this subject.

The series ended up successful, I believe. I have a narrative that shows a series of undesirable events that stemmed from the first initial problem I had with my food dropping on the floor, and telling my boyfriend and receiving a message back ‘ah shit’. This common phrase led to more ‘ah shit’ moments that were captured, moments that I believe most audiences would be able to relate to, such as running out of toilet paper when you’re on the toilet, running out of toiletries, breaking glasses, tangles earphones etc. Any one person from the UK looking at the series will be able to relate to at least one of the pictures regardless of age.

My main aims were for the narrative to be enhanced through my technique which was successful; the toning and darkness of the photo give the image a cinematic, eerie and mysterious look that is overly dramatised. Another one of my initial aims was to create a narrative that was humorous, and this was successful because I, and others, can relate to this mood and these scenarios. Looking at them in that light when they’re not actually happening  causes realisation of how funny it is that we have such big reactions to something so small. However, feedback from others tell me that they don’t find it so funny. If I were to do this again, I don’t think I’d change this because I like how different personalities take different things from the series. The reaction you get from this will depend on your reaction to these things happening in your own life.

Changes I would make however would be to shoot more. I tried to shoot as much as I could but other university commitments unfortunately meant I couldn’t focus on just this one project. Having more images would have given me a larger selection to choose from when having to edit the images into a series. It was also a struggle to find things that I and other could relate to and that could be photographed in the same way, as consistency was important for me to have a project that visually flowed. I was given lots of ideas by classmates, friends and family however when their suggestions didn’t include a single object it was really hard to photograph. For example, in the list of most annoying things, one option was “Computer crashing losing work you've spent three hours doing” - however I couldn’t have photographed this without it looking completely out of place as all of my images have a black background and a spotlight effect on the object, and a computer screen is always lit all over and a torch wouldn’t have worked for a spotlight effect.

I would have also used a different camera. I used my own due to sheer simplicity and availability; I was never quite sure when the shoots were going to take place as they didn’t need to much equipment I could do them whenever I found the time. My camera isn’t that brilliant in low light and so the images cannot be blown up too big before the resolution and grain gets distracting. Using a camera better in low light situation, such as the Nikon D810 the University has, I would have been able to have sharper images capable of more alterations.

The printing of my images for the final presentation went well. There is some graininess to the images however this adds to the raw, imperfect feeling of the narrative. The colours printed well and seems consistent throughout, and are the same size. I decided to mount the images with no border,in order to enhance immersiveness and keep the intensity of the darkness within the images.  When I began mounting, I ended up losing a lot of quality in the prints; jet mount backing creased and made itself visible on two prints but I didn’t have the money to reprint or buy more mount board. There were also no gloves available in the university mounting area and so I had to use my bare hands, which resulted in some visible fingerprints. I’m disappointed in this presentation, and if I had more money/time I would have done all of the affected prints again.