C&N: Assignment 3, Rework

Back - submission - rework - development - diary - contact sheets - tutor feedback - zine
Asg.1 - Asg.2 - Asg.3 - Asg.4 - Asg.5

14th May - 22nd May -

[22May20] Tutor feedback suggested expanding on some of the ideas mentioned in the submission text and perhaps creating a small magazine (which I might call a pamphlet). This will take some time so I will undertake it separately and so I will undertake it separately. Regarding the images, it was suggested that it should be easier to see the originals and my versions together and so I will repeat them here.

The original text is on the submission page: I will add a few notes here and eschew formal referencing. I might use a similar format in the pamphlet, following an extended essay (1,00+ words?) on self portraiture covering the selfie / s-p divide, authorship, performance and my theory of the disparity of m/f approaches to the genre. Gazes should get a mention.

Sources and outcomes

after Bill Brandt

I had mistaken Brandt's for a mirror self portrait. When I learned that it was taken by Laelia Goehr, I nevertheless left it in the planned shoots, arguing briefly that authorship might remain with the subject irrespective of who released the shutter and citing Cindy Sherman and Tracey Emin. This notion will be expanded upon in the pamphlet.

Brandt is holding a 'Kodak Wide Angle Camera … used by police for recording crime scenes' (Greg Neville). He described its acquisition in Camera in London (1948),

One day in a secondhand shop, near Covent Garden, I found a 70-year-old wooden Kodak. I was delighted. Like nineteenth-century cameras it had no shutter, and the wide-angle lens, with an aperture as minute as a pinhole, was focused on infinity. Brandt, A Statement on Photography, 1948

What I'm holding is a photograph of just such a camera from an image kindly provided by Antiq Photo, Paris stuck on cardboard. At the time of writing it is still on sale for €3,500.

This is the most successful of the images (my tutor agreed).

after Manuel Álvarez Bravo

This was the least pleasing and least successful of the series. This is not unconnected with the fact that it is the least inspiring source. It is a prime example of my male self-porrtait gaze (see a mirror, take a snap) theory. Impulsive but, in this case, mundane.

after Stanley Kubrick

after Willy Ronis

after Ilse Bing

Note for plagiarism hunters: this was taken during EyV and was omitted from the assignment as a subject for that reason. It is being included here because I intend to put in in the zine. 6x7

after Richard Avedon

This was a relatively late find and inclusion for the project. Fun with masks. Difficult to take a photograph deliberately and 'correctly' of focus. I should have taken it normally and added the focus artificially.

after Vivian Maier

Perhaps Maier's finest self portrait was #1. It cannot have been spontaneous and must have involved considerable co-operation on the part of the mirror holder. See Sylvie Weil Selfies (2015).

It was only after submitting the assignment that I found this specific Maier self portrait (fig. 3): I was aware of many such examples but had not recalled the hat. It was taken on impulse: I first saw the bird's wing on the way to Sainsbury's, photographed it, and then realised that my shadow was available.

The after I had always intended to take was based on figs. 5 and 6, having seen it in the Huxley Gallery. I could not make this until Covid restrictions were relaxed.

[14May] I have not yet had the Asg.3 tutorial, but I had the opportunity today to address the Virus Image Deficit with the Lidl’s security cameras. I expected to have to travel to Bromley but, pleasingly, they have now been installed in their Eltham branch

Contact sheet.

[21May] I sent fig.3 for tomorrow's tutorial.
3.2 is that submitted for Asg.3
3.1 is a similar Maier
3.5 is what I would have submitted, given the chance
3.3 is Maier's original and 3.4 a detail thereof.

References

americansuburbx.com (2011) Bill Brandt: A Statement on Photography (1948) [online]. americansuburbx.com. Available from https://americansuburbx.com/2011/04/bill-brandt-statement-on-photography.html [Accessed 19 May 2020].

antiq-photo.com (2020) Wide angle KODAK View Camera / Bill Brandt [online]. antiq-photo.com. Available from https://www.antiq-photo.com/en/collections/museum/cameras/large-format-cameras/wide-angle-kodak-view-camera-bill-brandt/ [Accessed 23 February 2020].

Neville, G. (2015) Bill Brandt’s camera [online]. greg-neville.com. Available from https://greg-neville.com/2015/10/26/bill-brandts-camera/ [Accessed 22 May 2020].