Lecture 6, ITAP - 'Productions and Outcomes' Influences and Reactions

When we talk about interpretation we talk about how something has been changed, why it has been interpreted differently, how has the message that it originally portrayed differed.  When we look at something so influential to be reproduced in so many forms Alice in Wonderland is pretty high up.  It is by C.S. Lewis, originally a book but turned into film by Disney and then by Tim Burton, with thousands of illustrations, animations, photographs, the interpretations go on. But specifically looking into photography there are thousands of adaptations from famous fashion photographers using Alice and her wonderland as inspiration for fashion shoots such as Annie Leibovitz for Vogue or Tim Walker who uses the ideas scale and extravagant staging used by Lewis through the ‘drink me’ bottles as inspiration for his shoots. Both are particularly effective in creating a surrealist, magical, unreal world in a very real surrounding, adapting the famous story to suit what they want to create and achieve. Where as others take the theme to brand new levels such as the photographer Elena Kalis who adapted Alice to a surreal underwater world with her underwater digital camera, taking certain themes and famous props from the book to reestablish the theme and cleverly calling it Alice in water-land. This change updates Alice into current day technology, what can be achieved by twenty first century standards. Even back in 1903 Alice was being turned into a short 12 minute film by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow based on the original illustrations in the book. It was made 37 years after Lewis’ novel’s publication and eight years after the birth of cinema and was the longest film produced in England at that time but there is only one incomplete print known to have survived. So even then the novel was perceived to be something that of visual brilliance and to be envisaged for all to be swept up into the world of Alice and her wonderland.

When you are an artist you have to test your work, apply yourself to an audience and find out what works, what they like and what they don’t like. But also to be able to open yourself up to new audiences and new mediums and styles to keep your style current and desirable. Bec Winnel is one of my favourite illustrators, and although she isn’t a photographer, I love how she captures the female face through the colours and the positions of the models, she makes portraiture calm and distinctly beautiful. She lives in Australia and is a self taught artist, she isn’t massive or well known but she does have a huge fan base for her work. Her work can be seen in many exhibitions and shows and just these last few months she’s been in ‘Rancho Notorious, etcc and Twitching’ and ‘1000 Pound Bend – Just Another Agency Group Show’ in Melbourne, ‘Rivet’ in Columbus, ‘Watt Space Gallery – Look See 2011’ Newcastle, ‘The National Grid Gallery – Eclectica’ in Sydney. She is able to get her name and art work out there through mediums such as shows and thousands of blogs, but she’s also done magazine work for Mecca and Peppermint and her work is beginning to be put on to clothing such as her collaboration with Element Eden. Bec is lucky enough that her work sells, and is sold all over the internet and she sells many prints on her website, also, her work is to a very particular audience but can be seen as beautiful by any eye.

Examples of my practitioners used: