'Girl with Bicycle, Dublin', 1966
I liked that this photo seemed to be at once a portrait and a landscape. Hofer's attention to composition is clear here, reflected in the way in which she would meticulously set up scenes to her liking. The girl seems at once dwarfed by the empty landscape as she does fitting into her environment.
|
'Car Park, New York', 1965
The intensity and vibrancy of Hofer's colours are even more striking when seeing the work in person. I picked this photo for that reason. I found it interesting that the images taken in New York are vibrant and full of life, whereas her photos in Dublin seem to have a more muted sheen.
|
'Phoenix Park on a Sunday, Dublin', 1966
This image seems to emphasise the importance of a complicity between the photographer and their subjects. Grafik describes pinpoints the 'slight glint in their eyes, as if they know they are performing for her camera'. You can see that the subjects are reacting to Hofer's unassuming presence as a photographer.
|
When entering the gallery space, you are introduced to isolated vignettes into people's lives in different areas - from a schoolboy with a basketball to a climate activist holding a poster. On a large wooden table in the centre of the space is a collection of printed photos in an album - resembling that of a family photo collection, inviting you to flick through. A whole wall is dedicated to a patchwork of posters and images from popular culture, such as icons from Pitts' 1980s youth. Entering the next space, Pitts has created a home-like space, including a set of shelves with a DVD collection, a small TV, a coffee table and a large sofa. Finally, the show ends with some more contemplative images which experiment with light, such as the one on the right.
|
Initially what drew me to this photo was the use of city night lighting - capturing something magical within an otherwise ordinary scene. Upon further research, I discovered the poem that accompanies the image. This quote struck me - 'the city's silhouettes emerge, reaching outstretched to the heavens' - as it reflects the photographer's job in transforming the mundane into the epic, the mystical.
|
This photo stood out to me as it was different from the others. Aside from being in black and white, it differs from the other more straight-forward portraits. In fact, this photo could be argued to be a portrait of to different people. Pitts' use of the glass skews our idea of proper portraiture and seems to invite questions into identity.
|
I chose this image as I like the vibrancy of the colours as well as Pitts' composition - the subjects are almost layered on top of one another, creating a bustling feeling The atmosphere of positivity is clear, reflecting Pitts' style of capturing spinets of people's lives
|
Naomi Campbell, Tank Top, London, 2000
This is one of the first photos that I saw. The orange tint really compliments the black and white photograph behind it, giving an almost artificial feel. This reflects Adams' idea of the sense of the celebrity as being viewed behind a screen. The photograph was framed, again creating that distance between the celebrity and the viewer, like the distance between the viewer's idea of a celebrity and their reality.
|
Amy Winehouse, Spinning Records, London, 2010
I liked that this photo seemed to capture some of the relationship between the photographer and the subject. Adams says that he was always fascinated by those who took his picture for album covers and magazines. To flip roles like this gives Adams' photos a feeling of the understanding of being on both sides of the camera.
|
Bryan Ferry, Smoke, London, 2000
This photo, hung across diagonally from Winehouse's portrait, seems to contrast drastically in mood. The blue colouring adds to the contemplative posing. Here, we see more of Adams' negative outlook on celebrity culture. The photos are like looking through a filter ensnaring the celebrity subjects. Adams states that 'They're sort of trapped', but also that this did not completely reflect his intentions, rather he liked more that 'it gives them a more Pop-art feel'.
|
As the exhibition progressed, we see the Beatles arrive in Miami, Florida. For this series, McCartney switched to colour film, capturing the bright skies and vibrant colours of the new place. The images from Miami document the band's few days off, giving a more intimate insight into their lives, and less of a serious look - holiday snaps rather than studies in documentation. The switch to colour also reflects the change in the band members' lives which would change their world forever.
|
For this image, I cut the strip to cover my face to partially obscure my likeness. I also decided to sign the work with the year. I think the timeframe is very important to Fonseca's work as the context within which he was working in pushed him to create the work. Therefore, by signing the work with the year, Fonseca signals that his works are acts of defiance. I wanted to represent this in my work.
I decided to use the most close-up portrait for the experiments with bubble wrap as I thought the wrap would mute the obviousness and up-front nature of the self-portrait. I only placed the bubble wrap over the print for this collage as I found that gluing the bubble wrap distorted it. The main difficulty I encountered was photographing this collage. The lights reflected off the bubble wrap which reduced the visibility. I also took images in low lighting to try and avoid this issue, however then it was too difficult to see the self-portrait under it.
|
I mimicked Fonseca's black line over the eyes for this collage as I liked how this brought a certain harshness to his collage. I used the print in which the photo is the smallest within the paper as the use of white space brought attention to the black line at the centre of the image. I decided to write 'self-observation' as Fonseca does at the bottom of the page as it seemed suitably ironic to me as my eyes are banned from 'observing'. I also continued my idea of writing the year.
For this collage, I was actually planning on cutting a strip of this pink tissue paper which only obscured my face. However, when the paper fell on the print in this way, I liked the fact that it obscured the whole image while keeping some visibility due to the thinness of the paper.
|