Final Major Project Unit 10 Daniel Lamper

Edges

my dissertation I began by examining the relationship between verisimilitude and the fantastical. The definition of verisimilitude is the appearance of being true or real. It is the idea that something can only hold aesthetic value if it represents aspects from reality. I was interested in researching these concepts because they changed the way in which artistic photography is viewed. I started to look at cinematic

images by conceptual photographers who would mimic the format of contemporary films. Most of these images were either in a panoramic or a wider format to get close to the widescreen aspect ratio in films

My initial idea is to carry on from what I had been researching in my dissertation and practicing in my minor project. The concept of the cinematic in photography has become a style that has many historical connotations associated with fine art and paintings. These images are ‘made’ not ‘taken’. Certain entities are staged within these images to represent something theatrical. In

Concepts of the Cinematic

Bill Henson

Bill Henson is an Australian photographer who creates cinematic portraits by consistently orchestrating available light, mostly in twilight. The aesthetic effect from Henson’s photographs, in particular his handling of light to create a transcendent effect, suggests a contemporary reworking of the sublime. This concept provokes the conflicting sensations of astonishment, terror and awe.

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is a photographer who creates images based around real people but requires a film set. His large scale images are all narratives of small town American life. They are essentially films forged into a single frame. While the photographs are staged with crews that rival many feature film productions, Crewdson takes inspiration from traditional, conventional cinema. Crewdson talks a lot about how new technologies have enhanced his creative freedom, Crewdson’s method of printing in a large scale is to compete with tradition art and he does this in order to overthrow the monopoly in gallery spaces.

In Crewdson’s images every detail of these images is planned and staged, in particular lighting. In some instances extra lighting and special effects such as artificial rain or dry ice are used to enhance a natural moment of twilight. In others, the effect of twilight is entirely artificially created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7CvoTtus34

Ellen Rogers is a London-based fashion photographer and filmmaker, originally hailing from Norfolk. Her images are at once dark, soft, evocative and deeply memorable - like something you’ve seen before but can’t place. Something of a curiosity in our digital age,

She uses 30 to 40 different cameras to capture her ideas on film, after which a bit of alchemy comes into play. Behind the closed doors of the dark room, Ellen experiments with alternative processes to straight silver gelatine to secretly develop her unique photographs.Although Ellen doesn’t particularly look for modernity in her images, it seems to find her. It seems as though she is reframing the past and making it into something new and original. The reason I started researching this photographer is because I may want to experiment with painting of photographs to relate to my previous projects.

Ellen believes in working with purely analogue techniques and equipment, even creating her own dark room chemicals. And the beautiful photographs that come out of this - often images of ethereal temptresses set in a dream world from a different time - are layered with a powerful sense of history. With personal interests spanning from vintage cameras right through to comic books, it’s as hard to define the person as it is her art. But one look at her work and it’s nevertheless clear that there’s also a deep fascination with beauty, religion and the occult. And it’s a fascination that yields something simply stunning.

A new book, titled Edwardian Opulence, catalogues the work of various Edwardian artists, including Whistler, Sargent, and Shannon, and is the "first survey in more than a generation of the full breadth and depth of the elite visual culture of Britain in the brief but complex reign of king Edward VII.""The first survey in more than a generation of the full breadth and depth of the elite visual culture of Britain in the brief but complex reign of king Edward VII."Included within these pages is a treasure trove of autochrome prints, an early colour photo process invented by the Lumière brothers, and first made available in 1907. Some of the images are of modern, bohemian-looking women, and stand in stark relief to the mostly stiff and posed black and white portraits

of the Victorian Era – signalling the beginning of photography as an artistic medium rather than simply a means of documentation. American-born Alvin Langdon Coburn was considered one of the

best photographers of his day, capturing famous writers including G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells. Another, Etheldreda Janet Laing, studied drawing at Cambridge and often photographed her daughters in the garden. Mervyn O’Gorman, also an early autochrome adopter, was an aeronautical engineer by trade, a motoring pioneer, and an artist and photographer in his own right.

Mervyn O’Gorman in Edwardian Opulence

Jack Hinds: 2wenty-6ix ProjectJack Hinds is a photographer who has created a project based around bus stops. The create this effect the photographer has used light painting on a bulb setting to connote this cinematic effect. This photographer has named the project twenty-six because he states that the number has followed him like a shadow and that he cannot shake off. He states that: “From my date of birth, to my passport number (the digits add up to 26), to the bus I take to college,

no. 26, which arrives at 26 minutes past the hour. The whole journey takes 26 miles to complete, 13 miles there and 13 miles back, and each bus stop is assigned one of the 26 letters in the alphabet. I took inspiration from both Ed Ruscha’s Twenty-six Gasoline Stations and the uncanny, mysterious photographs made by Gregory Crewdson, in order to create my homage to twenty-six; represented by 26 photographs of 26 bus stops. The shutter was open

for a total of 26 minutes (a minute for each exposure).” The reason this photographer is inspirational to me is because I hope to use many of the techniques he has in order to create a cinematic feel, perhaps with the use of models included to create a narrative or possibly to promote ambiguity.

Ryan & Trevor Oakes: Overcoming the Conundrum of Photography

http://www.vimeo.com/26633949

Panoramic images have been a part of art and photography’s history since the beginning. In the 19th century, panoramic paintings became a popular way to represent landscapes and historical events. This was a thrill to audiences at the time because of the aspect of illusion. This immersion gave people the impression that they were in a new environment. The success of Yadegar Assisi’s 2003 Everest panorama in Leipzig provides us today with a hint of the feel of those first 18th and 19th century panorama exhibitions. Assisi exhibited a huge collage consisting of 3D models, detail photos,

and panorama photos of the Himalayas in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first scaling of Mount Everest. The 36 meter high exhibition along with atmospheric background music produced the illusion that the viewer was standing at the foot of the tallest mountain in the world. The largest panorama in the world remained on display inside an unused gas storage tank for two years. In 2005, the “Gruppe 180” artists exhibited a painted 180° panorama portraying Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate at the end of World War II. A viewer standing in the centre of the 28 × 5 meter installation had not only a strong sense of space,

Panoramas in Contemporary Artbut also the feeling of being transported back in time. The transitions between the artificial, historical image and the real, immediate environment were all but undetectable, and the vertical and converging lines within the image coincided perfectly with those of the surrounding contemporary architecture. Marcel Backhaus’ panorama effectively combined conflicting elements of past and present, destruction and reconstruction, and war and peace.

Identital twin brothers Ryan and Trevor Oakes are artists have similar interests. However, the brothers have taken their mutual fascination with vision, light, space, and depth to a whole new level, and have built their careers on exploring these concepts through drawing. The tools they use include a concave metal easel and paper, as well as a plaster head cap to steady their vantage point, It allows them to draw a perfect perspective. Ryan Oakes explains: “We designed the tools ourselves, and our second cousin was able to weld the materials, he told us ‘anything

you can draft, I can build.” If I am to experiment with panoramic images, I will have to understand the concept of perspective and how it would be percieved by an audience. Illusion could then play a part.

Alfred Eisenstaedt has chronicled the last century with more published photographs than any other photographer in history. Eisenstaedt became known to millions worldwide through his work for LIFE Magazine, which he joined as one of the first four staff photographers in 1935 (when it was still Project X). His 86 covers and over 2500 assignments for LIFE have portrayed the earth-shaking events and influential people of the twentieth century, from the dignity of royalty to the elegance of movie stars, from the passion of scholars to the determination of diplomats.The reason I choose to research this photographer was because he experimented with the perspective of his own shadow. This is influential

Alfred Eisenstaedt: Silhouette Self Portraits

because it could lead to tmy experimentations of my own shadow but within a panoramic format

Chrystel Lebas is a French photographer who this series of forest panoramas. This project featured these environments in twilight that creates a cinematic effect rather than creating a theatrical abundance of light and colour. Instead of stitching these images together, Lebas uses a panoramic camera and long exposures which allows Lebas to observe the effect of fading light. Lebas uses panoramic photography

to connote the event as it unfolds over time. These images are often the starting point for an investigation of childhood memories or the darker side of fairy tales. She calls this work ‘Between Dog and Wolf. A translation of the french expression for twilight and suggests its transformative and dangerous potential.

‘The forest is a fascinating place, one can feel attracted to its grandeur, or scared by its depth and darkness. This space of immensity echoes our childhood memories, through fairytale or play. Walking through the forest of my childhood in France, after many years, I remembered when we used to build a hut,

and slowly the light would disappear, and darkness would surround us.’ Chrystel Lebas

Ansel Adams: LandscapesAnsel Adam’s work represents a prolific and rich contribution to American photography including many hundreds of images that continue to influence the conception and practice of the art of photography. His preoccupation with photographing was in the intimate details of nature. Adams’s vision reflects interaction with nature on a direct and human scale. These works move away from the nineteenth century example of the idyllic panorama of the American West, where Adams himself photographed, and exhibit a more contemporary application of photography’s abilities. Adam’s main interest in photography was within his

ability to capture nature’s most intimate details. He explore aspects of form and texture as well as light and shadow. Adam’s was very specific about how his landscapes would look. I plan on making a few series of landscapes that follow similar conventions to Ansel Adam’s work.

British artist Anne Hardy photographs large-scale interior spaces which she carefully constructs over several months. Using complex camera techniques, reflections and painstaking positioning of objects, she conjures still life images that look as if a person has just stepped out of them and paint vivid portraits of that imaginary occupant. Anne Hardy’s photographs picture depopulated rooms that suggest surreal fictions. Working in her studio, Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour-intensive process of constructing an empty room, then developing its interior down to the most minute detail. Using the transient nature of photography, Hardy’s images withhold the actual experience of her environments, allowing our relationship with them to be in our imagination. The painterly aspect of Hardy’s work

Anne Hardy: Inside The Artists Studio is exemplified in Drift: an image of a buried room. The room’s spatial qualities are almost completely negated, flattened by the camera’s aperture into a self-consciously pictorial surface. The extreme lighting of the scene both intensifies and diffuses the objects’ textures giving the control panel an impasto effect, and the ‘earth’ the soft feel of impressionistic brush marks. The sparse furnishings conceive the scene in terms of geometric abstraction, a metered tableau of hard-edged shapes and affected concentrated colours. n pieces such as Cell and Untitled VI, Hardy’s dense interiors become sites of wonder and unease as seemingly miscellaneous found objects compile with

an obsessive and meticulous order. Hardy’s subjects exude the not-quite-right ambience of dreamscape or madness; a sensation heightened through the unnatural intensity of artificial light. Printed in large format, Hardy’s photos give the viewer a sense of looking through a window at these spaces. Hardy’s work transforms sculpture into photographic ‘paintings’. Though her scenes are built in actuality, their compositions are developed to be viewed from one vantage point only and it’s only their 2 dimensional images that are shown. Hardy uses the devices inherent within photography to heighten her work’s painterly illusion. In Cipher, aspects such as the hazy aura around the fluorescent lights,

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/inside-the-art-ists-studio-anne-hardy-7462368.html

faux grotto walls, and the spatial defiance of the hanging ropes, give allusion to gesture and drawn lines. Through her intensive process of set building Hardy engages with ideas of theatricality, fiction, and performance. Her scenes suggest not only elaborate narratives of place, character, and events, but also a meta-narrative of obsession and control in manifesting their fantasy – all for the solitary moment of the photograph. Unlike film stills, which represent an image of a linear and contextualised story, Hardy’s photographs compound a sense of disjointedness and isolation. Their hermetic aura and invitation to scrutiny affirms their uncanniness or ‘unrealness’. Building offers a

surveillance room for forensic study, its wall of monitors broadcasting yet another world within its imagined scene, a further layer of embellished construction, reflecting on the fabricated nature of all realities.

Jem Southam is renowned for his series of colour landscape photographs, beginning in the 1970s and continuing until the present. His trademark is the patient observation of changes at a single location over many months or years.Southam’s subjects are predominately situated in the South West of Englan. He observes the balance between nature and man’s intervention and traces cycles of decay and renewal. His work combines topographical observation with other references: personal, cultural, political, scientific, literary and psychological. Southam’s working method combines the predetermined and the intuitive. Seen together, his series suggest the forging of pathways towards visual and intellectual resolution.

Landscape photography by Jem Southam

Southam uses a large format camera to produce 8 x 10 inch negatives. Southam prints these landscapes in a large format to allow the viewer to be immersed in the setting. I plan to use similar printing techniques in order to create a large landscape panorama.

Malcom Golver: Panoramic TimescapesMalcom Glover is an English photographer based in Sussex who photographs mundane settings but with a strange perspective in a panoramic form. His photographic work involves him using digital technology to produce large scale prints. He portrays British streets but in time intervals. He captures certain aspects of life on the streets from morning till night. The houses are stitched together and manipulated using

photoshop to create a single image of the entire street, not only showing the external life of the street but also the gradual light changes across the print as it progressively changes from day to night. The resulting image is constructed in such a way as to create a physical tracking shot, giving the impression of a cinematic experience. Glover’s final prints are 4 foot in height and 30 foot in length allowing the viewer to interact with the

street as they walk along it.I will use this technique for my panoramas, I like the idea of the viewer physically having to walk from one part of the image to the other. Glover’s images are successful in their format on a screen but the purpose of these images are to force to the audience to take in as much as possible in an interactive way.

Stitching Images using PhotomergeWindmill Shoot

This was my first attempt at creating a panorama digitally. I had my location prepared but I needed to consider perspective. Would I either have the camera move position in a tracking motion to get a more realistic perspective within a wider format or do I simply put the camera in a fixed position on the tripod and then test for a decent overall exposure

and then continue with that exposure setting while turning the camera on a tripod. I went with the second option because then I could experiment up to 360 degree. The diagram above shows how

this achieved.

The way I chose to stitch my images was through photoshop’s automate option: Photomerge. Instead of manually stitching these images together I can allow the computer to match them accordinglyChoose File > Automate > Photomerge.To use the images currently open in Photoshop, click Add Open Files.

Highdown Hill shoot

This shoot was located at Highdown Hill in West Sussex because of it’s vast views from a rural setting to an idustrial setting. Although the shoot was a success, because of it’s horizontal view. The panorama seems very one dimensional and doesn’t acutally have a lot going on in terms of entities enticing a viewers gaze.

Beachy Head research

Beachy Head is a beautiful place. White vertical cliffs rising to 535 feet above the sea. Very sadly about 80 people each year fall to their death from these cliffs. Occasionally people drive their car over the edge, sometimes with unwilling passengers. It is the 3rd most popular spot for suicides in the world. Some are suicides, some are accidents, some are murder. This location acts as a cultural symbol for death, because of it’s size and cultural reputation, this would be a perfect place to carry on experimenting with panoramas

Beachy Head shootBecause Beachy Head was a spot of significant English cultural importance, I decided that I could show in a panorama a series of images that represent what it feels like to look out of the edge. I decided that my two final images would be the same image but in a horizontal and vertical format. I placed my camera right onto the edge in order to connote this feeling of anxiety the place has. I photographed the whole thing in a RAW format in order for when they are stitched together they can be printed on a large scale. After I had finished photographing, I was stopped by police who thought I was about to commit suicide.

Final Images for Exhibition: A Vertical & Horizontal Panorama

http://www.toucan.com.au/sites/all/themes/toucan_display_systems/pdf/Toucan_Panorama_Bro_230112.pdf

Evaluation

In conclusion my two final images represent ideas that were not originally thought of when I started this project. Although, the concept of ‘perception’ and it’s relation to scale has been maintained throughout this process. Because of the historic and culutural symbolism associated with Beachy Head, the scale of the image connotes how suicide is an issue that is often overlooked in today’s society. It has always been an issue that has affected the human condition. After shooting the two images I was stopped by the police because from a distance it must have looked like I was

going to jump. This gave the project and the final images more substance because they represent the eeriness within this cultural landmark. The original image size was 9 metres long but in order to save on image quality and to present it in a way in while it could still be viewed on a large scale I decided to print on semi gloss paper, 30 inches by 4 metres. Upon looking at the printed image it allowed me to inspect entities within them that I hadn’t previously noticed at first such as the boat in the distance on the vertical one and the log and rubble along the shore. Because of it’s size it will allow to the viewer

to have a shared experience of Beachy Head that many people view right before they commit suicide. In terms of presentation in an exhibition setting, I have researched into pop up stands companies use to advertise panoramic adverts, in a horizontal and vertical format. But because of the image size I don’t see it being realistic. Presenting the vertical panorama in situ will be simple. It will be presented

almost like a banner than could possibly hang off a wall. Because of the two images large format size, I believe that in order to mount it to a wall I will have to use a series of velcro strips fastened to a wall to allow the appearance that the print simply hangs off the wall. I plan on keeping the white border to allow a sense of scale.

These two images on the right show a similar outcome to how I view my images being presented. The first image on the left shows a slight curve, because of the perspective of the image. Because my image has a similar perspective due to the camera being in a fixed place when taken. In the exhibition I could take advantage of the Infinity Cove. Due to it’s curved nature I could display it there which would allow viewers to enter the curve in order to follow it in it’s entirity. But because I have two images in a opposite orientations I will realistically have to present the two either side or have the horizontal one underneath and the vertical one above so that you would

have to look down to view it, and look up/ eye level to view the other. This could work as an advantage because the project is called edges and has a strong influence from the cultural significance of the location. Looking down at this type of image in such a large format may help to connote the concept that it represents.

Although, realistically in terms of displaying the work at exhibition will be challenging. I have either considered either simply pinning the prints to the wall or using a series of bulldog clips to hold them up. I like the idea of the print hanging as it could help relate back to the main idea behind the image. These images show various ways in which prints can be fixed to a wall with bulldog clips. The advantage to this is that I could involve A

form of polethat would allow the prints to hang off them, like the image above. Another possibility would be to have the larger horizontal print fixed on a wall by itself and have the vertical one on a pillar or side of the wall next to the main one. If that were to fail them maybe a variety of stands could be used to fixed the print off the ground, but the problem with this is because the image is 4 metres long it would require a lot of

stands. To summerise, either it’s fixed to a wall using pins or left hanging of a wall with velcro or bulldog clips. They are both simple and relevant ways to present the work it’s just deciding on the best way to ensure stability of the work in situ.

DANNY LAMPER

EDGESBeachy Head is an iconic English landscape. The white vertical cliffs rise to over 500 feet above the sea and about 80 people each year fall to their death from these cliffs. It is known as the third most popular spot for suicides in the world. I was on the cliff’s edge for about 45 minutes photographing, and for that whole time I didn’t see a single person but when I finished and decideddecided to head up the hill towards the main path I noticed two men wearing all black in the distance.

As I got closer it was clear that they were policemen. They beckoned me over and asked me if I was by the cliffs edge, I told them I was and that I am a photographer. He then explained that somebody had recently reported a potential suicide of someone matching my description. They explained the seriousness of the issues surrounding Beachy Head and theythey finally let me go when they were sure of my intentions. When I eventually joined the path, I realised that a group of spectators were watching the whole time. it’s sad that in today’s society that such a beautiful, iconic place has such a strong association with death.

www.danlamper.comdlamper@live.co.uk

This is a concept design for the catalogue that’s being produced along with the exhibition. The title of the exhibition is called “& Photographs” and the description on my double page is the story about the event that happened when photographing my final panoramas