2.6.1 A sea of images

 A sea of images? What does that mean? According to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette  "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation… The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images. The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective."

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette    on       http://arthistoryunstuffed.com/postmodernism-in-photography

Accessed   1/3/17

So everything around us has been turned into a never ending stream of disparate objectified images being fired at us from a myriad of sources. Faced with this fact it would seem to be extremely difficult to be original, or at least to produce an original image. 

 

 Untitled  K Darling-Finan 2017

Is this original? What does it say? Whats going on? Is anything going on? Quite obviously an image of a horse's hoof. We are all au fait with horse's hooves,  but where was it? Where had it been? Where was it going? Was anybody riding it? To illustrate this further,

 

 

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, 1978    accessed at    http://art134.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/post-modern-photography-idea-before.html         1/3/17

 We are all aware of cityscapes. Cindy Sherman creates an image here with post-modern attributes. Firstly it is enigmatic we have to create it's story ourselves, it is untitled. Secondly it has cinematic properties, indeed it is called Untitled Film Still. What film could this have been? Did it exist at all? Thirdly and most importantly (to me at least), is it's obscurity, it's denial of convention. The image is given a name which leads us down a path. How would we interpret this image without that prompt?

That brings me to the reason for this upload. I am increasingly drawn to the post-modern in my own practice. The concept of  The death of the author as written about by Roland Barthes which revolves around the denial of description, or at least the denial of ego, almost the negation of ownership of any creative work. Leaving personality aside and leaving the reader, watcher or listener to construct the narrative in it's purest form, without reference to the authors age, personality ethnicity or belief. Therefore in my practice I am now deliberately not titling my work in an effort to force the viewer to construct their own story based on what they are looking at.

                                       Untitled  K Darling-Finan 2017

I am embracing this post-modern ideal as I believe it is a way to show true originality. The image above has no title. There is nobody visible in it. Not a lot is happening but it is still possible to construct any number of narratives from it.

 

Reflection Module 2 3.1

How many images  do we see in a day? How many do we see and not notice?How many move us? How many do we recoil from? One study, available here, www.redcrowmarketing.com/2015/09/10/many-ads-see-one-day/10 Sep 2015     suggests the figure is somewhere between 4000 and 10000 images. And it has to be said that most of these are trying to sell us something. Not only advertising, but we might look at this car or that coat, this sandwich or that drink, and decide that is what we would like. This subliminal desire to possess is what fuels and motivates advertisers.

as far as individual images aqre concerned, they can be used to create a need, to create a mood or to create fear.

 The following video, The damage of life by Hawkwind (Agents of chaos) is an example of  anti propaganda. I have muted the music so it doesnt detract from the imagery. The sheer volujme of disparate images contained within it serve to show allegorically the kind of onslaught we are bombarded with on a daily basis.

 


 So where does this leave my practice? What bearing does it have on anything I do?
My work is becoming increasingly Post Modern.  There are cinematic inflouences creeping into what I am producing. I find myself harking back to the work of Edward Hopper.

Landscape 34 (2016)

Landscape 34 is an attempt to create a narrative within the viewers mind, a subconscious storytelling. There are elements both seen and unseen, shown and also implied. I have only realised its cinematic properties since engaging with this module.

So where do I go from here?  It was formerly my intention to show that visually challenged people can hacve a photographic voice, and that voice can sit shoulder to shoulder with almost anybody else holding a means to take or make a photograph. I am still persuing that objective, indeed I am running tutorials for other visully challenged people and organising an exhibition of their work in an effort to prove what I am saying.
My own work however, is shifting towardsa more constructed approach. I am finding more opportunities to photgraph images which consist of two colours or shades of two colours

 A30 Traffic lights, green (2016)

 Blue moon over petrified forest (2016)

 Moon over Sherborne (2017)

The three images above serve to illustrate this point about limited palettes. I am amazed by how many of the images I take have only two colours.
But back to advertising. The consumer society exploded into life in the 1950s in America, with every mod con and futuristic car being snapped up by the Jioneses and all their neighbours.

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? Richard Hamilton 1956
accessed at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-just-what-was-it-that-made-yesterdays-homes-so-different-so-appealing-upgrade-p20271   12/02/2017

Richard Hamilton's collage sums up this period perfectly, he asks a question wryly, the answer as we can see is that to be different we have to be the same. To appeal to us  we have to possess all the things advertisers are telling us we must. Mayhbe this is the lens we should look at all the images thrown at us on a daily basis. Hamilton shows us the vacuousness of advertising, 

One last thought. If you waqnted to advertise yourself and all your ideals, what better place than on a stamp?

These are stamps featuring the head of Adolph Hitler. Suddenly his image was all over the world. .