⇦ DIC Part 1 Exercise 1.1 ⇨

Nancy Burson, Esther Teichmann, Corinne Vionnet, Idris Kahn and Helen Sear.
Using the list of artists given above as inspiration, create a series of six to eight images using layering techniques. To accompany your final images, also produce a 500-word blog post on the work of one contemporary artist-photographer who uses layering techniques. (This can be any of the artists cited in any section of Digital Image and Culture.) DIC, p.21

[ spellchecked 8Mar23 ✓ ✘] †

[26Feb23, p.21]
None of the featured artists have particular resonances for me and so I shall try them all as technical exercises. My intended process is:
1. Start with a representative example of their work
2. Define their approach
3. Identify source materials
4, replicate the process in Photoshop (probably) or physically (if it seems more appropriate).

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear - 500 words.

text

Nancy Burson

Box A
Nancy Burson, Warhead I, 1982
image source: BAPhot

[26Feb] My intended subject is Prime ministers of my lifetime, one for Tories and one for Labour.

For the first attempt, as a matter of convenience, all the images have been sourced from https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers. Most are these are fairly consistent head-only, more-or-less straight on. Douglas-Home is semi profile, a few are at angles. Some of the later ones include shoulders. All but the most recent are cropped on the forehead. Adjustments will be made and the images resized to regain consistency.

[27Feb] Fig. B4 (click to enlarge) shows my first two attempts with the Labour Party, a manageable four subjects:

• for the first image (fig. B4A), I loaded the four Labour PMs into Photoshop,
• then file / scripts / load files into stack.
• Adjusting the opacity on each of the four images resulted in rather a mess.
• for the second attempt, on each of the source images I increased the canvas size then straightened the face, taking a line from between the eyes to the middle of the lips.
• this gave images B4B-B4E which were then loaded to a stack
• Harold Wilson was the base image at 100% opacity then each in turn was adjusted for size (edit / transform /scale), opacity, and moved to align the nose, eyes and mouth.
• this gave the improved outcome, fig. B4F.

Figure B4F is a face with some recognisable features from the source images (Brown's teeth, Callaghan's lines), but not looking too much like any of the four. If I had the technology, it might be interesting to weight it by time in office: Wilson 2 years, 33 days; Callaghan 3/30; Blair 10/57; Brown 2/319 (Wikipedia, 2023 1).

I suspect that twelve Tory PMs is too many for a sensible outcome and so will change the plan to merge just the female Tory PMs, Thatcher, May and Truss. Burson's Warhead I, fig. A1 comprises 55% Reagan, 45% Brezhnev and only hints of Thatcher, Mitterand and Deng Xiaoping, and so Reagan and Brezhnev are recognisable in the result. I will look for better images of the three Tory ladies and try the process in colour.

Figure B5 contains the workings for the Tory PMs, Thatcher, May and Truss. The images used (figs. B5A-B5C) are the official portraits taken by unknown, Andrew Parsons (2016) and Simon Dawson(2022) and sourced from Wikipedia (links Thatcher, May and Truss).
Figures B5D-B5F are the same images straightened and both B5G and B7 are the outcome. B6 and B4F are the Labour outcome. For a formal presentation, the outcomes should be tidied up, to concentrate on the faces, by here the workings have been left visible to demonstrate the method (and to document the size of Mrs. Thatcher's hairstyle).

The results are reasonably successful.

The Opacity settings are:
Tories - Thatcher 100, May 36, Truss 36.
Labour - Wilson 100, Callagham 37, Blair 31, Brown 39.

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear

Box C
Esther Teichmann, Untitled from 
Fractal Scars, Salt Water and Tears,
2012-2014
image source: BAPhot

Esther Teichmann

[26Feb] Teichmann is quoted on the parent Part 1 page as saying that she depicts primordial scenes because she is attracted to such spaces.
I considered what two images, related in some way, are significant to me and soon came up with an early portrait of my mother c.1941, taken (we think) for her 21st birthday (fig. D1), and a photograph of her gravestone, which she shares with my late father. My mother died in 2020, a few months short of her 100th birthday; her funeral was the last time I visited Wales; the only image I have of the grave is a low-resolution Instagram image sent by my sister (fig. D2). I'll run that tomorrow and might try auto-colourising the portrait.

[4Mar] Figure D3 is the portrait coloured using the Photoshop Colorize Neural Filter.
Figure D4 is the gravestone photograph tinkered with in Nik Filters Analog Efex with the intention of making it more aesthetically compatible with D3.
Figure D5 is the combined image processed again through Analog Efex with the Classic Camera 5 setting and a few nudges.
D5 is a reasonable start but the gravestone insert is too dark and the edges to clean cut.

D6 will do nicely. There's a good article on feathering edges here - https://blog.fmctraining.com/blog/how-to-feather-edges-in-photoshop.

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear

Box E
Corinne Vionnet,
from Photo Opportunities
image source:  cfye.com

Corinne Vionnet

[26Feb] Vionnet uses multiple found images made using roughly the same viewpoint. I plan something a little different, multiple images of Nelson's Column taken from various points circling around the monument, probably looking directly past each of the lions and then the mid-points between them. My working theory is that the monument is so distinctive that the accumulations will still be recognisable, but the foregrounds and backgrounds a relative mess with the lions coalescing in some way. We'll see - I'll try to get up there this week.

[1Mar] To Trafalgar Square today. Figures F1 and F2 are the contact sheets for the day. My original plan was for 8 shots - over the lions and mid points. I have learned that four images is a good number to deal with and 2 of the lions have to be photographed from "over the road" with no sensible mid point, so all the workings have been on four images. There are three viewpoints: 1. over the lion portrait; 2. over the lion landscape and close to the lion looking up, portrait.
Figure F3 is contacts of the first viewpoint, showing the four straightened source images (figs. F3A-F3D), then the working stack (fig. F3E) and the final crop (fig. F3F) .
Figures F4 and F5 follow a similar format for the second and third viewpoints with the addition of a final colour-enhanced image (figs. F4G and F5G).
Figures F6-F8 are the single final images for each viewpoint.

The over the lion, landscape, fig. F7 is the most attractive and interesting in my view. I confess to removing a "berry" hanging from the tree which was impinging on Nelson's head in one of the four source images.

This exercise was more successful and more fun than I expected.

The Opacity settings for the final versions are:

F6 - 1. 100; 2. 45; 3. 41; 4. 25.
F7 - 1. 100; 2. 39; 3. 20; 4. 17.
F8 - 1. 100; 2. 52; 3. 47; 4. 23.

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear

Box G
Idris Khan 
Every...Bernd And Hilla Becher
Gable Sided Houses, 2004
image source: BAPhot

Idris Khan

[26Feb] the Becher Gables (fig. G1) are probably the best known of Khan's images. I described the every page of Camera Lucida (fig. H1) as essentially pointless but a good front cover for Batchen's Photography Degree Zero. I'll try a book of my own, The Missing Mondrians (fig. H2).

33 pages of PDF were converted to JPEG and reduced to 960 long, to make the stack of manageable size. The front cover was moved to the bottom of the stack and set to opacity 100. The remaining pages were set to opacity 25% in bulk and then individually adjusted from the bottom of the stack to 25%, 24%, 23% until it reduced to 3% and then all the remaining pages set to 3%.

The result, figure H3 was rather a bland disappointment and so I processed the file through several HDR programs to tinker with the colour intensity. Affinity HDR (fig H4) was a step in the right direction, though still undistinguished even at the Dramatic setting. Nik Filters through Photshop (fig. H5) was better and on the Structurised 1 setting was approaching the dirty, smudged look of the Khan with subtle hints of colour. I have not used Aurora HDR since downloading a free copy some years ago, but its Look 2 preset, after juggling a few sliders gave a result more appropriate to the subject and has Mondrian overtones. It needs a close crop to lose the page numbers. When time allows, I will rerun the exercise with larger files and Aurora.

text

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear

Box I
Helen Sear, No. 2
from Beyond the View, 2009-10
image source: BAPhot

Helen Sear

[26Feb] No ideas for this one on the first pass.

[4Mar] A week later and I am no closer to an idea worth pursuing on this front.
Regarding image overlays, I did think this morning of a photograph I made nearly 50 years ago. The students I befriended at university included one whose family ran a rambling establishment in the Brecon Beacons. A group of us often visited there in the long holidays and I remember taking a photograph of a window in a bedroom I stayed in. Paterson Texture Screens (I think they were called) were in vogue at the time and I printed the image using one. This is one of the few photographs I have from that time, probably taken on a Zorki 4.

Figure J1 is the image, probably from 1974. And eBay (of course) has Paterson Texture Screens for sale - I would have paid £10, but £30 for this set is excessive, figs. J2-J4, on sale at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295315292592. I think I used Reticulated Grain.

Burson - Teichmann - Vionnet - Khan - Sear

500 words

Nancy Burson

[5Mar] The products of most of the artists featured in this exercise seem, to this writer, to be rather contrived but the technology that Burson helped to invent is, by a considerable margin, the least pointless. Burson set out to create a system that simulated ageing of the subjects in photographs (fig. K1) and this has been used by the FBI in seeking missing persons (Burson, 2018 and Garzon, 2023). She further jointly developed the software to serve artistic and political purposes.

Writing just a few years after Burson published her first composites, Vilém Flusser (1988) saw parallels between Burson's manipulation of pixels and then recent scientific developments in gene manipulation: he regarded both developments as sinister and unstoppable, but his worst fears have not yet bean realised in either field. Kozloff states that Burson considers facial characteristics "with the astuteness of a poet who is also a statistician" (2007, p.301).

Artistically, Burson's methods are usually interesting and can deliver a powerful message, though, as with most photographs, they are susceptible to any number of interpretations .

For those who lived through the Cold War and the heyday of the CND, Warhead I (1982, fig. K2) will be particularly poignant, with the merged facial features of Reagan and Brezhnev apparent and the derivative implication that a meeting of minds might be possible.
Big Brother (1983, fig. K3), combining Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler and Khomeini will have resonances for a fast-disappearing generation.
Mankind, Oriental, Caucasian and Black faces, weighted according to then current population statistics (1983-4, fig K4) can be interpreted in a variety of ways to support a similar number of political outlooks.
The merged actors and actresses from various periods, for example fig. K5 (Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields and Meryl Streep) are frivolous in comparison, but nevertheless speak to the superficiality of glamour and the fickleness of taste: Roswell Angier (p.243) describes the work as, "explor[ing] how our society defines beauty". Another piece from that period neatly aggregated the faces of US presidents (fig. K6).

Angier (ibid.) describes a later, controversial project where Burson exhibited photographs of children suffering from craneofacial disorders and progeria 2. The photographs were unaltered, but the use of an inexpensive camera with a plastic lens resulted in Pictorialist haze (fig. K7) that could be taken to romanticise a tragic subject: the antithesis of the actress composites.

Burson was invited to contribute to the inaugural display at Tony Blair's hubristic Millennium Dome (fig. K8) and this gave rise to The Human Race Machine with which visitors could view their features transformed to the characteristics of other races. Burson commented,

My intention in building The Race Machine was to allow us to move beyond difference and arrive at sameness … there is no gene for race, I felt it was one of the most important things to understand about genetics. The DNA of any two humans is 99.97 percent identical. And then The Race Machine became The Human Race Machine. We are all related, all connected, all one. Burson quoted in Angier,

The system " tour[ed] U.S. universities and colleges" (JKS, 2020), and was featured in "all forms of media" (Burson, 2022) (figs. K9 and K10).

Another turn of the century project was Guys who look like Jesus / Women who look like Mary (2000, fig. K11) 3. This uses an opposite trajectory to Burson's projects examined so far: rather starting with a variety of faces and merging them to a central concept, these start with single (imaginary) idea of a face and seek multiple likenesses that conform to it. For subjects, Burson " placed [an ad] in the Village Voice asking to photograph people who look like Jesus or Mary" (Dembo, 2006).

More recently, Burson has applied her techniques to Donald Trump, during his presidency. For a TIME magazine front cover, Trump was merged with Putin (fig. K12) and in a video describing her work (Burson, 2018), she states, "I think it's a really good time to be doing this kind of piece because, as far as I'm concerned, dictatorships and democracies do not align, they just don't go together" and so she regarded joining their images as an ironic comment on their relationship. In the same year, Burson applied race simulations to Trump's image, four of which are shown (fig. K13).

Arguably, Burson's underlying subject throughout her career has been identity and how it interfaces with appearance. Her work is subject to an unusually broad range of interpretations.

Notes

1 For an earlier defence of the use of Wikipedia, see C&N. In this case it was the only source readily to hand that gave a precise count. Britannica only gives the years and Oxford only mentions their alumni; the other sources Google listed were previously unheard of.

2 Angier describes this as "a rare condition that causes them to age a lifetime during a few years and to die before reaching adulthood".

3 Perhaps interestingly, my immediate thought when I read about this project was, "how does she know what Mary looked like", implying that we know what Jesus looked like: we don't, of course, that's just 69 years of religio-cultural indoctrination.

DIC Exc 1.1 References

Alexander, Jesse & McMurdo, Wendy (2015) Digital Image and Culture [DIC]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

Amelunxen, Hubertus; Iglhaut, Stefan & Rötzer, Florian (1997) Photography After Photography. Amsterdam: G&B Arts International.

Angier, R. (2015) Train your gaze. (2nd edn.) London: Bloomsbury.

Burson, Nancy (2018) Nancy Burson, TIME Cover Artist, On Her 'Trumputin Summit Crisis" Cover, TIME [online]. youtu.be. Available from https://youtu.be/3kCzdpCcEXQ [Accessed 6 March 2023].

Burson, Nancy (2022) Human Race MCHINE [online]. nancyburson.com. Available from https://www.nancyburson.com/p/human-race-machine [Accessed 8 March 2023].

Dembo, Wendy (2006) NANCY BURSON: THE HAND OF GOD [online]. coolhunting.com. Available from https://coolhunting.com/culture/nancy-burson-th-1/ [Accessed 8 March 2023].

Flusser, Vilém (1988) Chimaeras, in Amelunxen et al. (eds.) Photography after Photography (1996) Munich: OPA, pp. 150-155.

[Flusser's essay was originally published in European Photography No. 33, January 1988, p. 46.]

Garzon, Martha (2023) Nancy Burson [online]. marthagarzon.com. Available from http://www.marthagarzon.com/contemporary_art/2011/02/nancy-burson-race-beauty-power/ [Accessed 23 March 2023].

JKS (2020) Artist Profile: Nancy Burson [online]. historytheorymethodology.wordpress.com. Available from https://historytheorymethodology.wordpress.com/2020/06/17/artist-profile-nancy-burson/ [Accessed 8 March 2023].

Kozloff, M. (2007) The theatre of the face: portrait photography since 1900. NY: Phaidon Press.

Wikipedia (2023) List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom [online]. wikipedia.org. Available from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom [Accessed 5 March 2023].