Disposable Camera Photography

1) 100 homeless people were given a disposable camera, 80 cameras were returned and all of the images taken were narrowed down to just 13 images from over 2,500.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/100-homeless-people-were-given-disposable-cameras-this-is-what-they-shot-10476468.html

From looking at all of the images, the feeling I get is that the homeless people have taken images of something that has excited them or something they are caught in the moment by it's beauty or their interest of the sight they can see, intrigued by the colours. Almost like they are capturing the happiness they feel at a particular sight as I feel that being homeless is not a very happy thing at all so it is nice to see the happiness they do feel within their images so you get a sense of emotion from viewing them. As someone who likes to 'capture the moment' when I see something I'm intrigued by rather than just taking photos of everything I can relate to these images like the photo of the dog, this is something that would excite me in my day to day life so it would make me feel as though I wanted to capture the moment so I can keep that excitement on record almost. The shadow in the self portrait I love as if I saw my shadow over lines like this I would be intrigued by the shapes and contrast so I would also want to capture this if I came about the situation. The last one of the ducks and the sunset would also be the kind of sight that I would feel had to be captured as I am interested in wildlife and nature and getting the beauty of a sunset as well a family of ducks in one shot would excite me.

2) Chris Coekin documented his hitch-hiking using a disposable camera:

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/chris-coekin-the-hitcher#slide-1

Although some of these images are staged as some of the subjects are posing I still feel they are all very candid. He's just captured straight forward compositions with central subjects to document people during his hitch-hiking. I like how theses images are very 'real life', no one has staged a scene or carrying props or doing any outrageous posing, they are just simply looking at the camera casually which sets a day to day natural scene. I am interested by candid imagery from disposable cameras as I love the nostalgic feel they give even if the imagery is of modern scenes. I like his central compositions as they add to the point and shoot candid feel.

3) Stephen Gill gave disposable cameras to 100's of members of The Royal Mail and from 30,000 he chose a few to put together for a book he created.

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/stephen-gill-unseen-uk#slide-11



I like this series of images as you can see the members of The Royal Mail have captured interesting moments they have come across whilst doing their job or at home or just photographing what they have seen to be pleasing. This documents the day to day lives of those that work as post men.I like how it is a personal documentation and this is what I want to try and do with my final project.

Wildlife Exhibition

I went to the Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. The exhibition showed award-winning images taken of wildlife from all around the world.

When I first entered the exhibition I was in awe straight away at the quality of the images as they were all in light boxes and I had never seen work presented in this format before. It made the colours so vibrant and showed so much detail, it almost felt three dimensional.

I am very interested in wildlife photography hence being a national geographic subscriber so I was rather impressed with all the images in this exhibition.

Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad: Hyson Green Workshops

"  In this exhibition, designer Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, explores an ambitious citizen-led project that emerged in NAE's local neighbourhood in the 1970s; The Hyson Green Workshops. The Hyson Green Flats were a residential tower block that stood on the site behind NAE where ASDA is now located. Faced with ill-considered planning and architectural flaws of mass social housing, the active citizens of the flats, spearheaded by the Hyson Green Development Tenants' Association, reacted by co-designing alternative solutions in their environment. Together, the group fought to transform the disused and problematic garages, situated underneath the flats, into spaces for cultural expression, community activity and economic growth.  " -http://www.nae.org.uk/exhibition/hyson-green-workshops-citizen-design/97

I liked this exhibition a lot as I got to see images of the area I live during a time I did not live there and it looks a lot different so I was taken aback by the comparison of Todays Hyson Green and Hyson Green back in the 70's.

I also liked how the actual exhibition room kind of looked like scaffolding as it went well with the images of construction and destruction of the buildings in Hyson Green

Monuments Should Not Be Trusted

This exhibition at the Nottingham contempary showed the art and culture between the 1960's and the 1980's in Yugoslavia.

August Cernigoj

August's work drew me in straight away because of the vibrant mood board type collages he created. I love the use of imagery as he has combined fashio, pop and film 'icons' of the time period as well as adding in a bit of political history within the images like the flags, symbols (swastika) and uniform (navy?). These images were some of my favourite from the exhibition.


Marko Pogacnik

 
I love this pop art created by Marko Pogaknik. I like how he has very simply made a puzzle/collage by just priniting the image of The Rolling Stones on to matchboxes and placing them together to make up the image. It is simple yet creative and I was drawn in by the bright colours.

Beli Ljudje

Beli made a film called "white people"
http://espectrofilia.ricardogreene.cl/post/17810803776/beli-ljudi

I was quite fascinated by the video clips that they put together as it was very visually stimulating and dream like which made me confused, shocked, happy and more whilst watching it. I haven't reacted to a video as much as I did this video so it really stood out at the exhibition and was probably my favourite thing there.

"The breakaway from traditional styles like socialist modernism was exemplified by groups like OHO, by the late 1960s influenced by Art Povera and land art, seen here in films like White People (1970), where the artists wrap each other in tinfoil, blow bubbles in milk, pretend to be sheep by sticking wool to their naked skin, throw down flour and roll around in it, and then, in the final scenes, set off smoke bombs in a bleached landscape of snow and fog. The group merged into the land, in fact, setting up their own commune in rural Slovenia in 1971." - http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2016/02/monuments-should-not-be-trusted-reviewed/

Performing For The Camera

I visited the "Performing for the camera"exhibition at the Tate Modern in London which shows the relationship between photography and performance. The photographs document artists, actors and dancers.

Yves Klein

Harry Shunk and János Kender took these images of Yves Klein's studio art performance "Anthropometries of the Blue Period" to document it in Paris, France in 1960.

I really liked this documented piece as I have never seen the human body being used almost as a paintbrush before other than seeing handprints and finger painting. Its like the models had created self portraits almost by becoming a human stamp as you can see the body shape of the women on the wall with the blue paint. I like how you can see the female form in a simplistic shape and the bright blue colour draws you in. It is a very good piece of studio art and it was enjoyable to see.

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm let people become a sculpture for 60 seconds and she photographed them. She was documenting them becoming an artwork rather than them looking at artwork so that they could explore themselves in a new way. I like these images as it shows just what you can create in a short amount of time and how you can make use of objects you wouldn't usually think to use in order to express yourself or create a structure.

Masahisa Fukase Bukubuku

This series of images are called 'bubbling' and were taken in 1991. They are self portraits but taken in a more imaginitive way to express and explore the identity of ones self. I really like these images as they are very candid and personal, quite an intimate feeling given which helps to show the persons personality which is interesting to see when you haven't met the person before.