Untitled Kairos

Thanks to:

Jonna and Ben, for letting me store huge boxes with large heavy cameras, tripods, darkslides and general mess in your house and putting up with me, I am grateful beyond words for your patience. 

Jonna, Ben, James and Sammi, for helping me photograph with Nidhogg the beast. Carrying those annoying heavy tripods, helping me set up in windy rainy conditions, holding dark cloths and neg holders and all the crap that I needed.

Paul, Beytan, Dave, Peter, Ellen, Joy, Natasha, Matt and David for tutoring me, discussing my ideas with me, giving me advice on artists to research, helping me set up printers, managing the show, building the walls and lending me filters.

Ben and Jonna, for setting up my website and teaching me some basic html and for letting me eat all your food, drink all your tea & coffee, shower, and lending me tools and cameras as well.

Rich and Chris, for being my housemates travelling with me, giving me lifts and being poor and eating shitty food with me.

My parents for supporting me financially.

Terry Pratchett for writing some dope, hilarious, insightful books.

Jonna, Chris, Rich, James, Sammi, Amber, Hollie, Angus, Ellie, Aaron & y'll alcoholics for some crazy nights out and crazy nights in.

Simon, Susanna, Sam, Matt for drinking whisky with me, being sources of inspiration and keeping me motivated, even if I wasn't often sending you messages or coming to visit, I was thinking of you.

My website, as it stands

www.petethor.co.uk

Post Resolution Work

My large A0 print, I am saving for the Free Range exhibition. I have been working on some post resolution work.
As it is highly experimental I am not displaying it for the degree show. I stated earlier, my work is two different chapters of the same book. This work is the sequel to that work.

These are my original scans:

These colour papers are intense. They represent a dystopian nightmare alternative world. The reason for this is the first half of the series, the empty abandoned interiors that I have been stuck in, and the natural outside world that is a painful release from the first half of the series.

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I inverted the scans, and experimented with the levels and colours, they are still very blue but the colours in some really are not far off. I learned the ISO of colour paper is tricky. The ISO of the magenta is somewhere around ISO 25, but the ISO of the blue is 100. I cut out the magenta,, with two magenta filters that cut 2 stops on the recommendation of one of my tutor's Peter Renn, I now feel I should have used blue filters to filter out the Blue and bring it down by several stops to bring it more in line with ISO 25.
The colours are still quite basic and would need more work to get them to somewhere I might want to display them. However I feel that when the colours are inverted the photographs lose their strange nightmare feel.

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While experimenting with colours I adjusted the midtones in the colour balance adjustment in Photoshop. this was pretty much the first thing that happened, Richard Mosse eat your heart out.

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I retouched these as negatives to retain their nightmare aesthetic. I altered the colours in them though, so each had a strong colour dominating its composition, I think some work really well and accurately display my intentions, but others just dont fit, I feel the some of the series works better in its original negative colours.

Project Proposal

Peter Thornton

Project Title:
Untitled Kairos

What I want to do:
I wanted to explore my relationship between my medium and my character, the fears and dreams that I shared with the equipment. I forged a caring relationship with the medium and pushed to areas I never before could imagine, these represent my fantasies, daydreams, worries, fears and considerations.

materials:
10x8 camera, changing bag, dark cloth, dark slides - neg holders, loupe, shutter release cable, light meter, tripod, 5x4 camera, 5x4 film, darkroom paper, film, developing fluids, c41 machine, imacs, hardrive.

skills required:
hasselblad flextite scanning, epsom scanning, epsom printing, Photoshop, Lightroom, Indesign, lightmeter skills + maths.

cost:
darkroom paper - 40£
colour paper - 33£
film - 35£
printing - 150£
nails - 5£
bulldog clips - 6£
1/2 year of the course - 4,500£
rent for 4 months - 1300£
travel - 30£
gas bill 4 months - 98£
internet - 26£
food 4 months - 500£

total - 6723£

additional tutorials required: large printing, 10x8 camera

timeline:

jan
dissertation
initial ideas
initial research

feb
dissertation
develop ideas
develop research
hand in research

march
develop ideas shoot
reflect on them
shoot
professional practice

april
final shoots and printing and develop exhibition ideas
professional practice
printing hanging exhibition
finish blogging

Title Card

I had made my own title card, before I realised there was the uniform template that I was meant to follow.

Professional Futures/Professional Practice Evaluation

My last CV

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My new CV

After my meeting with Mr Watts in Careers, he suggested how to make my CV much better. He gave me advice on writing a covering letter and sent me some links to jobs to apply for. So I got on with updating my CV applied to the jobs. I wrote covering letters differing on what the job was asking for. I still do not feel confident they will lead anywhere but if you dont try you dont get anywhere.

The good points are it feels great to have clear careers guidance because back when I was on Jobseekers, I really wasn't getting anywhere, I didn't feel like the careers advisors there cared at all to actually get people a job, they just try to get you off Jobseekers allowance as soon as possible. However here I feel the staff are friendly and super helpful and are genuinely caring.

My start of the project doing Fashion Collaboration was great to give me some work to do for people instead of shooting and retouching for myself. I need to push myself into these things more, to network more and meet new people that might want me to work for them. 

I decided to have an online portfolio as it is the easiest quickest way to show people my work. It is easily accessible, in these modern times everyone has access to the internet 24/7 so it made sense to show digital work in a digital format. I do miss having prints though as I love the feel and look of printed paper. my online portfolio is here: http://petethor.co.uk/category/retouching/

I made friends with a previous graduate of the course, he has helped me tons to get my website up and running, I am so grateful as it is something I feel is almost beyond me. It is great to see a graduate from the course succeeding in something after uni and gives me hope for myself.

My artist Statement is: 

A fairly diverse photographer in his career so far, coming from covering events, music concerts, working with models and shooting underwater photography; he is primarily concerned with aspects surrounding Landscape Photography: narratives and topology within the boundaries of social definitions.Currently continuing work surrounding land under both decay and development. He is also developing a photographic document surrounding his own life and the mundane idiosyncrasies’ within it.

It is the first page on my website and can be viewed here: http://petethor.co.uk/about/

I learned from what we were taught, I wanted it to be clear, straight forwards and not have any waffle, of course I wrote it in the 3rd person, and bounced ideas off my contemporaries.

Evaluation

My start with the fashion collaboration was fun, a good thing to put in my portfolio. Shooting, researching, dealing with models, arranging shoots, working with assistants, dress designers and making sure lighting, backgrounds and wind machines worked. I feel I could have done better to pose the models and had more inspired ideas.
retuching went well, I worked really hard and the designers really appreciated it. This led to me teaming up with one of the designers to help her do some photos for a personal project, which went well. The project was for her to show in an interview for a university, which she later told me she was accepted for!

My initial ideas were true to myself, and I am sure I will try to do them at some point in the future to really realise their potential. I am glad I spoke about them in tutorials as I feel they are much weaker ideas, even if I had strong compositions, I did not have enough reason to be doing the projects.

I tried to do as much research, and to vary my research from photographers I love to get more insight and to open my mind to other ideas. I think this really helped to get me more ideas and think about things in a different perspective. I always feel I could have done more research, as there is just so much out there to discover and often I talk to my friends and course-mates, and it seems they are discovering artists that I just dont know about.

I tried to think of looking for jobs in a new original perspective, I still feel I am struggling, I went to see the careers advisor at uni, and I still have a ways to go on writing a good covering letter and CV, but I feel I am starting to get there with the CV. I still feel worried about looking for civilian work, I guess I am a confident person, but not so confident at selling myself. I feel confident in my retouching skills, but there is so much competition, I wonder how to get above the competition. Working hard and networking hopefully will pay off.

I feel I should have gone to more galleries, there are many things I wanted to see. But student finance don't exactly allow me much spare money to travel to and around London and for entry fee's, even with student discount life is too tight to go often. It seems like each time I go I can only average 2-3 galleries per visit, then it starts to get to 1700 or 1800 and galleries close. How does it take so long to walk around a gallery and stand on the tube?

My 5x4 work took a long time to start to start to take shape. I think using the slower larger format helped me to think precisely what I was shooting and why. I still think my original photographs on 5x4 film were weak, but they helped me to realise a new idea and to understand what I wanted to photographically.

My use of paper was really interesting, and helped me to push the boundaries of what I thought possible with photography. It was intense shooting with the paper as before I shot I really had no idea what to expect, and whether the exposures would even be usable. I love seeing the images arrive in the developer, I think it is as exciting as shooting the pictures originally.
The 10x8 camera was something else. Very difficult to transport, very difficult to use, but so rewarding for the tones and the sharpness. If I was to do anything differently I guess I would take more care of the tripod, as I am used to quick release plates, where the plate just stays on the camera the whole time, but I manged to lose two tripod screws just because the came loose and dropped out while walking with the camera.

I think the build went well and the hanging was stressful but it got done and I felt some people pulled together to make it happen. I wasn't too happy about lazy people not turning up, and I thought that when people stood around bitching about them, that was almost as bad, if they would just pick up the slack and get on with it, the work would be done quicker and there would be nothing to complain about.
I tried to help people as much as I could and I left each day aching sore and exhausted. But it just had to be done, I wouldn't have felt I had worked as hard as I could if I was fresh each evening and had no worries on my mind.
If I was to do hanging different I would have paid more attention to what was happening with other people as I put up a text panel with my work before I realised it didn't fit with the uniform text panel we were all meant to use. I tried to keep up with the emails, but when I was that busy and that tired every night I fell behind, and I couldnt follow the facebook group we set up because I would receive hundreds of notifications every day mostly from people complaining about the course instead of making the most of their time at UCA, I got sick of the arguing so I stopped following it as for a time there was nothing useful for me to read.

Overall I think my project went well but I always feel there is more I could have done.

I chose "Untitled Kairos" for my title. Researching Kairos and Chronos was really inspiring, it helped me to push forwards with my ideas surrounding my project. Kairos seemed the natural title for the project. about the opportune moment, and time passing in an unmeasurable way. It is still Untitled as each moment is an untitled moment in the whole passage of time.

The Show Build and Wall Hang

Show Build

The day came to start the show build. The tutors asked for us to split in groups, I immediately joined the building group, as in college I had done painting walls and I helped with show painting in first year of uni and I know I don't find painting much fun at all. However what with my uncle being a carpenter by trade, I have been around tools and building all manner of things since I were a child.
In the Easter break one room had been built already, and some amount had been done in another. We as a year group hauled many pieces of timber in and quite a few boards. After that, the painting team dispersed to paint the upstairs room that had been built and we started to build boards with timber between them to be put up in the centre of the room.
The next morning we finished that room and until Thursday we built the upstairs room G152. I teamed with my buddy Rich and tasked with building the double boards to go in the centre of the room, while the technicians Paul and Adam put up boards around the walls. It got done apparently ahead of schedule, it was a very sweaty but fun few days, lots of jokes and laughs, it was a good small team to get the build done, had fun but stayed focused on work.
Before the day came when everything was finished being painted, I was ready to hang my work. I helped build another room as I enjoy building stuff and my room was not ready. I guess I could help paint that room, but I felt I would just be someone in the way of people painting.


Wall Hang

I borrowed a few tools from my buddy Ben; hammer, screwdriver, tape measure, they were invaluable. I bought some small assorted nails and many bulldog clips. I chose I wanted to hang my work in this manner when I saw this used in the Photographers gallery (see my post - The Photographers Gallery - Anima & The Widest Prairies).
I learned the best way to hang is at 150cm for good eye level. I used this as a guide, and measured out exactly where I wanted each print to go, I put them all on the floor in front of my space. 
I measured everything out using the tape measure, a spirit level and a ruler. I wrote things in light pencil. I worked out where to hammer each nail into the wall until 5mm was still sticking out of the wall. 
I played with the idea of putting one of my A2 prints in the middle of my A3 prints inspired by when I was looking at Wolfgang Tillmans. I decided against this as there was no reason to do this and it didnt look so nice.

I went back to my original idea, I cropped the white paper around the images so they were neat and hung them all the same, the bulldog clips let the natural paper aesthetic stay there rather than being contained within frames and hidden behind glass or flattened when mounted to card or foam.

This is my final hang, I started to become stressed when hanging this, as once I finished put all the nails in I was asked to help someone, so I became stressed as I just wanted to finish hanging my work. I guess understanding a spirit level and knowing how to use a screwdriver makes me a worthwhile commodity. I wore cotton gloves when handling the prints. They needed some tweaking after being put up just to straighten them out.
This picture was very hard to take, my space is so wide that I had to use an ultra-wide angle lens on a 35mm sensor camera. The picture was so distorted that I had to do a fair amount of lens corrections using manual corrections in Lightroom to fix a bit of horizontal distortion and a ton of vertical distortion, and of course a fair amount of distortion from the wideness of the lens. 

After I finished my hang I went to hep hang other peoples work, The rooms were open till 1945 that night and I did not leave until the caretakers came to boot us out, whats got to be done has got to be done. The next day I pulled some people together to get the rooms hoovered, cleaned of any stray paint left over and swept up any dust that the hoover couldn't get. After all the work I wanted the place to be in the best possible state for review. Even the tiniest things can change someones impressions. I also hoovered the hallways around the Show just to make sure, it might be the cleaners job to hoover floors, but if there is a load of mess photography students made, leaving it for them to clean is taking the piss. Work life has left me with a high standard for cleanliness and those floors were spotless when we finished.

The Editing Process

I spent a day editing through my images to decide which ones to display, and how to display them. I edited through my prints so it was easy to move them around and see how they would play out on a wall.

I took a while to get a grid that I was happy with.
I liaised with Ellen Nolan for a large amount of wall space. I was considering displaying the A0 print I had, though I really wanted to save it for the Free Range exhibition as it takes up considerable wall space.
In reviews people say they see my 10x8s as part of a different series. I see them maybe part of a different chapter, but they are definitely pat of the same book. I went through those prints for a connecting edit too.

I like this edit, with the silver river leading into the heavens, and the path of it repeated in the print at the bottom with the path going through it. People who know the areas have commented on their strange aesthetic, they are backwards! Usually with film emulsion the photograph is viewable on both sides of the film, but with paper, it can only be viewed on one side, so the photographs are backwards. The sky swirls with an ethereal light; the ground is dark, oppressive, angry, aggressive. When I edit, I chose to have things different, I could have put the images with the ground at the bottom, the rivers in the middle, the sky at the top, but the series is representative of a dream, a dystopia, so it needed to be mixed up, adding to the unease of the 'chapter'.