Logo Design

Heh heheh having fun with adobe illustrator. Inspired by fotografiska logo and various clocks.
I think it is appropriate for me as i am interested in the aspect of time, what I make work about and it is always a key consideration when I make a project. As a photographer I was drawn to the logo of fotografiska, it reminds me of aperture blades. Since becoming a photographer, and studying my BA and MA, I became interested in mechanical and automatic watches, the fact that they just run by clockwork and springs and gears is super cool, all my favourite old cameras have mechanical shutters so I took this into my idea when I made the logo

Memories

1. The wind on shahallion, the rocks walking over near the top of the mountian to try and reach the top
2. Slioch and the peak, then walking across the snow to the slightly lower peak to look out across lake maree
3. Driving past slioch the next day to look at the mountain on the other side of the loch. Also rowing across the loch to the inner islands to explore them a bit
4. That bit near the tree peaks on Ben Ighe(?) where we couldn't get to the peak because the weather was coming in real fast, then trying to get off the steep ice/snow, nearly slipping to the rocks below, then glacading down some of the less dangerous snow and then running along the flats to get to the car so I could change out my wet socks and shirt
5. going up pillar on the hottest freaking day ever, losing the path and having to climb up that steep rock face and looking below to the rocks and having to pull myself up onto a ledge and cutting up my chest and shins
6. driving past loch Ness going north and looking right to see Ben Nevis away behind the hills but somehow also towering above.

 TBC

The Mountain

I have been invited to take part in an exhibition in Berlin in Spring 2018, the theme for the exhibition is 'mountain'. I will make a new body of work for this.

Ideas
- paper negatives
- the current environment
- the time of year

Its interesting that the theme is going to be mountain, since I now live in Finland, the other artists in the exhibition are all Finnish but there are no mountains here Suomissa.

I think my current idea is that I will take photographs of my surrounding,  mainly in the forests, of views that I find appealing. I spend more time in the forests. Forests and wood as a building material are quite an important cultural aspect of Finnish identity. I think Finns have a greater feeling for the nature than for example english people. Even there are some wild areas here, and the population is so small that there can actually be some areas not taken by humans, unlike england where really human activity is everywhere and has been pushed into every part of the country
I grew up often going to highlands in Scotland, and to Lake district and to hiking holidays with my family. I remember these trips with fondness, particularly the views and the scenery in the mountains, in fact that is really how I got into photography.
Since now I moved here to a place I am almost stuck in place right now, since the job situation is very slow and belonging to TE and having unemployment benefit is basically non-existent, I must find peace and solace, I need to remember the mountains as right now I cannot go back to them.
For me I love mountain biking and being in the natural places and forests, the great outdoors, the countryside, away from other human beings. The bike takes me there, it is not so much 'mountain' biking, as off road riding I suppose.
Photography has a history of connections to mememory, and the picturesque, I think my work should reflect how I am using photography as a tool for memory, and wistfulness or nostalgia. The sights and fields and forests and views I find on my everyday ride in the area I live are very pretty in their own right.
I want to juxtapose these new views, the everyday views and alter the idea of memory, I can take the pictures just on my phone as snapshots, and print them and scan then and print them and scan them etc.
I will do this because;
1, photography as a medium is defined by its ability to reproduce things in an indexical way.
2, the act of copying the pictures will introduce accidents and artifacts that alter the pictures.
3, memory gets worse and alters as time goes on, perhaps each time you revisit a memory, you forget a little bit, until just the core of the memory remains.
4, we live in the digital age, where everything is fact and matter, everything has proof. but perversely every fact can be twisted, looking at the current political climate, with an orange buffoon as most powerful man in the world, a blond buffoon as a joke of a foreign secretary, and a campaign trail based in lying to the general public (printed in large letters on the side of a bus) we can assume that fact and fiction are one and the same, a photograph can be used to twist and spin any agenda depending on how the photographed is used.
5, change and chance. I want to manipulate my photographs that leaves a factor to chance, something not entirely in my control to create the final piece. It is this out of control part that is key as I do not feel in control of my life in this current state, my photographs must reflect this.
6, change and growth, moved to finland

I want to play with this idea of reproduction, how photography can make something perfectly many times. To play with this process and experiment with a simple photographic process to produce something other than a simple index will fit this idea of disjointed memory.
I need to pinpoint specific memories of the mountain, my visits to mountains or mountainous areas. With these idea I need to reproduce the pictures using somewhere in my surroundings, that I can realistically travel to.
Once these pictures are made then I can expose and reproduce them to experiment or play with the perception of memory.

1, the memory of mountains, somehting dear to my heart
2, making 'new' memories in a new place where i cannot really visit to mountains
3, the nostalgia of the views and childhood/younger me visits
4, revisiting these memories
5, putting memories into a new place, trying to find nostalgia in a area where I dont have any nostalgia yet
6, will any future nostalgia I feel be for still the mountains, or will I have some nostalgia for the new place without need for old memories
7, am I looking for new ideas new creativity, new opportunities new experiences? or am i trying to just relive the same happy memories, and try to put those feelings into a new place to try and feel better about it?

Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography - Gail Buckland

"The story of the invention and the life of the inventor assume exiting proportions when related as the tale of a 19th century English gentleman's philosophical quest for "truth" Great Britain, unmatched leader of the newly industrialised Western world, bred and nurtured Talbot"
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p11.

"In the history of photography there is no more seminal a figure than William Henry Fox Talbot and no photographs more compelling than the earliest photographs made"
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p12.

"Talbot's ambition was for knowledge, not fame, not friends, not wealth. Knowledge had to be striven for with all the energy and power within him."
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p14.

"The central concern of Talbot's life, however, was scolarship, not in any one discipline but in a multitude of subjects; he viewed all knowledge as interrelated."
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p14-15.

"The scientific view of life was connected to the artisitc; the derivation of a word explained as much about the world as looking at crystals in a microscope; cultivating plants was as joyous and as challenging as making pictures with the camera obscura"
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p15.

"Talbot encouraged his children to be attentive to the intricacies and delicacy of flora and at the same time discussed authoritatively new discoveries with the experts of the Linnean Society, of which he became a Fellow at age 29, an honour reserved for the most distinguished botanists of the day. In this context, his photogenic drawings and calotypes of trees, ferns leaves and plants take on a new dimension. These were not just random subjects easily available for pictures, but objects to be scrutinised and considered in their own right"
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p19-20.

This is in complete opposition to my own work, i know next to nothing about the plants I photograph, instead it is an unknowing collaboration between my other who has some idea for keeping a garden, and myself who sees these little subjects.

"The "idea" came to Talbot (or Talbot came to it) during his six-month belated honeymoon with Constance in 1833 while attempting to sketch  scenes at Lake Como with a camera lucida. His drawings were pitiful. He thought he might do better using a camera obscura as he had done before but realised that being a poor draftsman his attempts would always be hopeless. Suddenly, it seemed, Talbot imagined the outlines in the camera obscura as "fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined to quickly fade away" but "how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!"
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p25.

"Talbot, like many other Victorians, seems to have done too much in his lifetime. Perhaps, as Steiner suggests, he needed less sleep, but why did he work quite so hard all those waking hours? The answer is in his letters and papers. They reveal a man consumed by the idea of cultural evolution and the advancement of civilisation."
Gail Buckland (1980). Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. London: Scolar Press. p107.

Roland Barthes On Photography

"Western theories of art emphasize the importance of imagination and the insight or genius of the artist. So dominant has this philosophy of art been that literary criticism in academe throughout the better part of the twentieth century has tended to privilege literature of complexity and imagination over realism"
Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. preface X.

photography is inherently a realist medium, therefore to make photographs of note, one need not make photographs to be realistic, one must use that basis with insight into a message they want to convey, this is what makes photographic projects worthwhile

"Talbot's own remarks about his photographic work convey a sense of delight in the permanent rendering of nature's "fairy pictures, creations of the moment"; a sense of pride and in excitement over humankind's progress and his part in it"

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p32-33.

I guess i somewhat feel the opposite, humankind is progressing at a rate that seems uncontrollable, new technology is ever more expensive and always progressing far beyond the capabilities of its older generation. It doesnt seem dependable, all the fossil fuels being burnt and resources being used up making plastic objects that are used to a couple of years and then go obsolete. I feel disapointed in myself and in the social structure of the UK and the world, that it is unaffordable to be up to date. So in conclusion i do not feel excited to be part of this modern age, just another number, another leech on the world. The history of man has been put into sections - the Neolithic age, the Bronze age, Iron age, and within them subsections, what age are we in now? the plastic age? The age that built so much then lost it all? Humans in the last couple of hundred years, from the industrial revolution to now, made so many advances that we are able to contact the other side of the globe with complete ease, we can even travel to the other side of the globe in a short space of time. If there are historians in the future what will they say of us? When photography was invented this must have seemed as impossible as the clear sharp cameras we all carry around in our pockets, the same cameras that are part of the powerful computers that are able to connect with the other side of the world to share pictures.

"Daguerreotypes were treasured objects as well as mementos. The held the captured light of loved ones and favourite scenes in a device requiring careful manipulation and observation - a process, however, considered magical and thrilling. Daguerre had succeeded in giving the public the ultimate recreation of nature - one that lasted more than just a short while in a darkened theatre: it was, instead, a re-creation to be possessed and kept forever."

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p35

I guess i see my images as closer to Daguerre than Talbot, as although they are made to paper, and are negative, they are one time things that cant, or in my mind shouldnt, be reproduced, they are much like daguerreotypes, to be viewed as is. In this i do not see the daguerreotype as the invention of photography. Although textbooks tell us a deguerreotype is superior in sharpness and tone that a calotype is, the point is that a calotype could be produced more that once. what is interesting to me, is that in this digital age, we never make negatives, a digital camera makes immediately a positive, a recorded representation of the scene we want to share. while these images are immedietly positive without any further work, the key here is the sharing, in this digital age we share images, often instantaniously, and a daguerreotype is not built for this. When comparing a Talbotype (calotype) and a daguerreotype we are really comparing two different things, its like comparing a painting of a chair and a photograph of a chair. both might have been made with skills and both might have been made into a physical object, but there will only be one exact painting, however there can be infinite pictures.

so what i need to ask is am i not making photographs in my process? i am not trying to call a daguerreotype a painting, rather that it is an artform in its own right, something different to photography that uses a photographic process. Perhaps why the thing as a whole is called photography and not dagguerrography. but is this what i am doing? something akin to colourful photograms? but where photograms miss the camera and go straight to the light source, i am still using the camera. so perhaps that must be that they are: somewhere inbetween. something inbetween photography (a calotype), a dagguerreotype and photograms.

"By 1859 Baudelaire has seperated truth, at least as he believes the public to understand it, from beauty. He contends that nature is the only thing in which the public believes, and, therefore, the public believes that only the exact reproduction of nature is what art should be" - Baudelaire 1981, 152

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p53

Rona Pondick

Rona Pondick Sculptor

Quotes from http://bombmagazine.org/article/3351/rona-pondick

In arranging and curating the show, she selected a number of historic sculptures from different cultures—East and West, some dating back a few thousand years—from the museum’s collection to be shown alongside her own. This idea produced provocative juxtapositions, giving lucid insight into Rona’s working methods and interest in the fragmentation of the body and the more recent idiosyncratic hybridization of natural and animal forms with the human body, which she elucidates below.

Her work of 'human/animal' sculptures is what is being discussed here. I discovered her work from the tree sculptures, i m interested now also in her human animal sculptures. immedietly you can see evolution, talking about time and the evolution of mankind, it looks back to past times. i think its interesting that she chose to use these old historic sculptures with her work, these old sculptures also talk of metamorphises. god like creatures mixing humans and animals. the show looks back to a more primitave time from all over the world, but i think these times when these sculptures were made were not simple times they were full of religious wars and religious strife and famine and disease with a lack of medicine compared with now. however her sculptures to me speak of even earlier times, pre human, when humans are starting to become homosapiens from homoerectus.

RP If you look throughout history, what’s wonderful about art is that it’s mutating and spiraling. It doesn’t move in a linear way. We artists take things from maybe the last 100 or 1,000 years and twist them and re-do them, putting them into our own voices and time periods. In one section of the Worcester show I put a bronze Thai Buddha from the 15th–16th century next to my yellow stainless steel Dog that I finished in 2001 next to a Mexican ceramic from 900–1200 next to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom limestone from 2060–1780 B.C. I found it interesting that sculptures from different time periods and cultures—in many different materials, all made in different ways—looked like they made perfect sense together.

Is is a shame that photography doesnt have this kind of history? sort of, it could be argued that since photography has a relevence to painting that there are some ancestral links to look to. it can be argued that photography doesnt have anywhere near the timespan as scultputre or paintings, as these date back to cave paintings and ancient monuments, but now i think art has eveolved to a point where a succesful artist, a successful photographer should look at all forms of art, not just photography, therefore the 'ansestors' a photographer should have looks back a long time for some aspects of a project. However of course you cant draw inspiration for speaking about photography from what an artist did 1000 years ago as they couldnt have been trying to say anything abut photography.

RP The first time I merged a fragment of my own body with an animal form a light bulb went off. I realized that animal-human hybrids have existed since the Neolithic era, and if you look throughout history, it’s an image that has repeated over and over. Now, when you look at the way science is advancing with cloning and genetic manipulations in both human and plant forms, it’s chilling how it all comes together.

Sometimes it takes me a while to understand what I’m doing in a piece, psychologically. When I’m working on a sculpture I don’t always understand what I’m doing and it can take me years to understand fully what it means. But I’m definitely aware of the emotional interpretations. People want to believe there’s a narrative. Because I’m bringing contradictory fragments together, I believe the viewers try to bridge the gaps and wind up projecting a lot of themselves into my work.

RP I don’t think I’ve ever made a sculpture that’s not a fragment or made up of fragments. One way I engage the viewer is to show a part of something rather than the whole. The whole is complete. It makes sense. It’s logical. The viewer is more passively engaged.

i think its the same with photography, it has to have little traces and flavours of something, of some idea, or a message, but then if it tries to show the whole thing it becomes a little pointless.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/03/art/rona-pondick-with-phong-bui

http://www.ronapondick.com/press/ronapondick_AMA_2012.pdf

Her work is all about metamorphasis, taking one thing and changing it, whether through fragmentation, or losing its colour or morphing two things together. is this what i am trying to do, make a metamorphisis out of the natural world? maybe, i guess i see these plants that should belong in the natural world as already metamorphasised. so maybe i am trying to further the development. taking macro shot of them serves to make them further unreal, to further take them out of any sort of earthly context. i guess its all just absurd. these macro shots of flowers having any sort of significance to anything, they dont really pertain to anything anymore, they have been changed so far from where they have originally come, maybe that is my point about humanity, that we have come so far from any original humanism. all the religious and political divides just put everything into a negative light.

Anna Atkins

She is considered to be the first person to ever publish a photo-book, however these prints were made by a camera-less technique, so maybe some people can argue over this point
Her mother died when she was just a baby, so she grew up close to her father who was a botanist, she she grew up knowing plants intimitely.
This knowledge and her friendship through her husband to WHF Talbot led to her making light prints of the things she new best. Another family friend was Sir John Herschel, the inventor of the Cyanotype. This is what she used to make her most notable works and books.
cyanotype process is quite important, as it was used to make prints of plans for architechural buildings - blueprints!
the tones of the plant materieals in the whites of the are quite nice. what is interesting is this early desire to record the natural world and set it in order. i can almost imagine these first photobooks being great for learning, she gave them out among her friends i think, im guessing by her husband and accquiantances that they had an interest in botany too, they would keep these tomes in their library to be taken out when they needed to recall a certain plant. I went to visit Charles Darwin's house, and i remember the size of it and his garden, i can just imagine a similar house with a library with another scientist or someone interested in the natural world with these books looking up the names of things. again its this point about imagination from early photographic works.
However really the amazing thing about her work, is the realisation that photographic technique could create accurate copies of extremely intricate things, to aid in learning.

Something else i personally find interesting about her work, having tried cyanotype process for myself, is that the images are unique, they are all straight to paper images, created by placing the object over the paper and exposing, then processing; the result is a photogram. does mean my images re technically photograms, i mean there is a camera involved, but there is no point when i make a positive, no point i use what is essentially a negative to make a 'truer to life' representation?