Lecture 1, ITAP - The Genius of Moving Image

Question & Answers:

List two specific key relationships between Sam Taylor Wood's photography and film work?

      Her photography and her film work relate through the fact that in the set of photographs called ‘five revolutionary seconds’, the idea is that the people presented in the photographs are in such close proximity to each other yet have no awareness of each others presence. And in her film work, for instance, ‘Sustaining the crisis’ (1997) its as if the man is staring at the woman, but because they’re on separate screens, you do not know if he is or not. Meaning that we do not know in both her works whether the people that are together are actually aware of each other. The second relationship is that, the difference between the two mediums is that you see them in different speeds. Films, she does in a very speedy way. With the photographs she give herself time to calm down. So the photographs are the punctuation points in her work process. But she does see them as dysfunctional narratives.

How does the use of multi-screen installation in her work reflect narrative?

      In Travesty of a Mockery, 1998, she filmed an actress and her male friend, in an argument. Each of them are on a screen, as the viewer you are in the crossfire of their argument, in something very personal, you feel almost claustrophobic, because the screens are so large. The woman and the man each have their own screen in the argument, and when one crosses the other you feel that they are getting in one another’s personal space, making the viewer even more claustrophobic and the fight more intense, one another shouldn’t step into the others personal space/screen.

What other photographers use film as an integral part of their work. List two with examples?

      One photographer that uses film as an integral part of his work in Rankin, he uses film for where photography wont take him. He’ll shoot fashion stills for magazine and also make a film, for instance Gemma Arteton for Elle, Harrods Beauty, Vanity Fair, Helena for Triumph, Jitrois. And many advertising campaigns, Lucy in Disguise, Rimmel, Swatch, M&S, Diesel, Ann Taylor, BBC Three, No. 7. And many music videos, Kelis, Sly Ferreira, Kelly Rowland, Noisettes, Maria and the Diamonds and Robyn. Rankin uses film just as much as photography to create the effects he wants in his work.

       Another photographer that uses film is Mert & Marcus, otherwise known as Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, who are fashion photographers strongly influenced by Guy Bourdin. The duo use film along with their photographs to enhance their work and feel. When looking at one of their collections of work for Love Magazine, ‘What Lies Beneath’, their images mirror the short film that is presented with it, which really enhances the provocativeness and breath taking quality, how darkly beautiful and disturbing it is but how cinematic yet raw it looks. They also shoot many magazine spreads from Vanity Fair, US Vogue, W magazine and campaigns from Emporio Armani, Calvin Klein, Mui Mui, Bulgari, Givenchy, Gucci and Stella McCartney.

Research three other Video artists and explain their working philosophy.

      Steven Spielberg is a director that is world famous, he covers all genres in his career and has been involved in 100's of movies. Spielberg’s early science fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. In Private Ryan, one of his many famous films, he says: "I simply wanted to create a feeling with the audience of being trapped. The audience is so conditioned to seeing movies rising to a climax and getting some relief at the climax, and I wanted to pass that point of what would normally be called a climax because there was no climax at Omaha Beach." It was thought that this contradicted his belief that you build the tension to make the final relief that much more welcome but: "Well, that, that, that's been my level of film-making with the rare exception of Schindler's List, it's been my philosophy of working the audience." He says "The aims of many of my films, especially my early films, was to transport audiences to new places and in so doing, take myself there too.”

       Zack Snyder is another famous director that is known for lamboyant visual style using a combination of dynamic compositions, highly-saturated color schemes and visual effects. He often speeds-up and slows-down motion during action sequences 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009). And is known for slow motion shots of a fist punching a cheek.

         James Cameron is another famous director, with films under his belt such as Titanic and more recently Avatar. In high school he wrote sci-fi stories and fantasized a lot instead of doing his homework. An avid reader of science fiction since childhood, he was fifteen when he saw Stanley Kubrick's visionary film, 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. He became fascinated with the whole motion picture process he subsequently watched the film ten times. "As soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker," explained Cameron, "It hit me on a lot of different levels. I just couldn't figure out how he did all that stuff, and I just had to learn." Not only did Cameron desperately try to understand how motion pictures were made but also he wrote sci-fi stories and fantasized a lot. It was actually during a biology class in high school that Cameron wrote a short story, which would later become the movie, The Abyss. Cameron doesn't create a film because he is trying to pander to the audience. He does it because he is passionate about it. He's keenly aware that his passions must convert into something commercial, but he doesn't place commerce ahead of passion but his passion is palpable. Audiences can feel it. So is pandering. And audiences can feel that, too. 

Show an example of a specific gallery space or a specific site location where a video artist or filmmaker has created work, specifically for that space and been influenced by it.

       An artist that has been influenced by a space is Chris Columbus, who directed ‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone’ by J.K. Rolling. For the film two British film industry officials requested that the film be shot in the UK, offering their assistance in securing filming locations, one being Gloucester Cathedral. Gloucester’s historic cathedral cloisters were transformed into the corridors of Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the films of JK Rowling’s first two books – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Many parts of the Cathedral were used in the film such as The East Walk of the cathedral cloisters, which were transformed into the corridors of Hogwart's School. The West Slype doorway - in the Harry Potter films this becomes the doorway to Gryffindor Common Room.

Lecture 3, ITAP - The Genius of Moving Image

The Work of Director Chris Cunningham

Portishead video – Only You

Bjork – All is full of love

Then Making All is full of love featuring interviews with Bjork and Chris Cunningham

Questions:

How did Bjork and Chris collaborate on the All is full of love video?

            They had mutual friends in London, Aphex Twin video happened, and people suggested that Bjork should ask him, so she sent him the B side mix to a song from her last album, he loved the track, and decided to do it. It would more be like a mini film, she wanted it to be very white, to describe some sort of heaven, and to bring lust into it also. She brought Chinese status, of white figurines, that were making love. She wanted the figures to be clean and hard and melt, and turn soft. Cunningham brought her an idea that she loved, and he was using industrial robotics, what he used to do as a kid and turned it into the video ‘All is Full of Love’.

What techniques were used on the Portishead video to create the unusual slow motion effects? Research this.

The video, shot largely underwater with the air bubbles removed digitally, features some of the most precise and beautiful choreography of movement in any video. It was then placed into the dark alley, to create the final product. Not only does this video prove Cunningham a master of capturing in images the personality of an artist and the mood of a song, but it also proves him a director with a keen eye for the possibilities and capabilities of the human body in motion.

What other music video directors have gone on to direct feature films? Name two and the feature films they have made.

            Spike Jonze did music videos for artists such as Bjork, Kanye West, Arcade Fire, Fatboy Slim, the list goes on, he has been able to shoot feature films, such as ‘Being John Malkovich’ in 1999, ‘Adaptation’ in 2002, and ‘Where the Wild Thing Are’ in 2009.

            Michel Gondry also shot music videos for Bjork, Kylie Minogue, Kanye West, The Chemical Brothers, The Rolling Stones, again, the list goes on, and from this he has shot many feature films, such as: ‘Human Nature’ in 2001, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ in 2004, ‘The Science of Sleep’ in 2006, ‘Be Kind Rewind’ in 2008, ‘The Green Hornet’ in 2011 and upcoming this year ‘The We & the I’.

Which famous sci - fi film did Chris Cunningham’s work on before he became a director?

Cunningham was Stanley Kubrick’s head of visual effects on his version of A.I., which failed to come to fruition before Kubrick’s death. None of Cunningham’s work on the robotic boy survived in the subsequent Spielberg version, replaced as it was by the insipid Haley Joel Osment.

What makes his work different or original compared to other similar directors?

            Because he wants every work to be completely different, he is constantly working to make it better. And with Bjork’s video, it was mostly all done is post production, with computer graphics, he barely shot any movement, mostly stills on the day of shooting before assembling it all for her video.

Lecture 2, ITAP - The Genius of Moving Image

 CINEMATOGRAPHY

 What is the role of the cinematographer in film making?

It’s a matter of bouncing ideas back and forth, its never simple, there is always a disagreement, but the role of the cinematographer is to depict and find ways to extract the vision of the film from the director, and to have the director to explain how is should look in great detail, how the shot should look, what lighting does he want/feel of the lighting, to then be able to create it. A cinematographer is also the author of the light in a film and how it contributes to the story, you put an idea in the audience’s mind, which they carry with them. The lighting and the look of the film makes the pauses speak as eloquently as the words, you have moments in films that are there because of how it is visually.

Why did director Roman Polanski insist on using hand held camera in the film Chinatown?

                        Because he could shoot within an actual bathroom, and create a very intimate scene, and spontaneity between the actors, a closeness that had not really been seen before, but this is because they had new technology to play with. He came from the Polish school, were they had to shoot things like that. He would force the actors to hit certain marks and to intimidate them, he wanted that voyeuristic kind of look.

Name two films which use colour in a very symbolic way, and describe what they suggest.

                        ‘Days Of Heaven’ Nestor Almendros, is a period film that used the natural lighting throughout the whole film, and mostly used the lighting just after the sun had set, and for the 20 minutes after that it stayed light, ‘the magic hour’. It created a ‘magical’ sort of lighting across the entire film, that you can simply only see in colour, which enables the film to be told through images.

            ‘The Last Emperor’, there was an possibility to make an analogy between the life and the light, the journey that The Emperor was thrown into himself, could be represented in stages, with the different stages of light, so different colours. The first time he was cutting his own vein, the blood was red, like when we are born, the beginning. Into the scene when the people with the torches are coming to pick him up, the colour is orange, the warmth of the family, the colour of the Forbidden City. He was using all the lights around the family, to get across the warmth and embrace. Yellow is colour of our identity, it leads the right, represents the light. Green is knowledge, only see green in the film when the tutor comes, this is the first time we see green, it means to know something, up to that moment, green was a forbidden colour, as he knew nothing, as of yet.

In the film Raging Bull why was the fight scene filmed at different speeds?

             It was based on big 1940s poster shots in life magazine, and that was what people of Michael Chapman’s generation remember fights as, as big flash photos in life magazine. They would start in 24 frames and go up to 48 frames and back to 24 frames, shooting in big 360-degree shots. They made a rule, that when in the actual fights they would try to stick to 24 frames, but they didn’t, and save the over crank stuff for when he was in the corner/not actually fighting. They had dozens of fights and different styles for each one, but it was an example of what Marty can really do, know what the audience emotional stories are with the shots, its very evocative.

Who is the cinematographer for the film Apocalypse Now, and what is his philosophy?

                 Vittorio Storaro, photography is a single part, like painting, cinematography is a common art, is not an art from that can be expressed by one single person.

See “Visions Of Light, The Art Of Cinematography” Arnold Glassman

Lecture 6, ITAP - The Genius of Photography

Questions & Answers

How many photographs are taken in a year?

            80 billion photographs.

What is Gregory Crewdsons modus operandi?

            Crewdson isn’t like normal photographers, he instead of capturing a moment, makes it himself, using production crew, cinematic lighting, actors etc. He spends days creating these images just to get one single perfect moment/shot. Crewdson himself doesn’t like holding the camera, he is more interested in the final outcome, the images, the camera is just a necessary instrument. He is his own director of photography and own camera operator, but does not take the image himself. For a set of 6 photographs, he spent 11 days make several multiple exposures in different locations, setting up sets for these images, which are then digitally combined to create the 6 digital images. They sell for around 60 thousand dollars, but he’ll only create 6 prints of each image.

Which prints command the highest price & what are they called?

            Usually the highest prints are the photographs that are printed by the photographer himself, closest to the time that the photograph was actually taken, these prints are known as vintage.

What is a Fake photograph? Give an example and explain how & why it is fake.

            A fake photograph is reproducing a photograph/negative that is known to be only have been produced originally so many times, so it is reproducing to deceive. In the early 20^th century, Lewis Hine used his photography to fight for social change, and to celebrate the dignity of labour. But 50 years after his death his photographs had become highly collectable. In 1999 Peter McGill brought a print of the ‘Power House Mechanics’, he was told it was 1 of 2 and it was warm toned, big, signed and stamped on the back, everything a collector looks for. It was then reproduced and was popping up every where, Michael Matters had also brought it, but as a theoretical physicist thought he could get to the bottom of these sudden reproductions through science. He developed lots of data criteria for photographic paper, and for the reproduced photograph he noticed there was a chemical on the paper called OBAs that were only put into photographical paper, only starting in 1955, but Hyne died in 1940, so could not be one of his original prints. Hyne’s former darkroom assistant, Walter Rosenbloom, finally admitted to reproducing his work for profiting from the demand. 

Who is Li Zhensheng and what is he famous for?

            Li Zhensheng is a photo journalist who from the 1960/70's found himself covering the cultural revolution.

What is the photographers “holy of holies”?

            Magnum Photography Agency is photojournalism’s ‘holy of holies’.

How does Ben Lewis see Jeff Walls photography?

            Jeff Walls didn’t reinvent photography, but he took photography back to the 19^th century where everything is created, the people, the light, everything is created for a meaning, He also fed in a lot of contemporary theoretical concerns, about gender and how man and women look at each other, racial stereotyping.

Which famous photograph was taken by “Frank Mustard”?

            Came Silve, ‘River Scene France’. 

Lecture 5, ITAP - The Genius of Photography

Questions & Answers

Who said “ The camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can’t help people knowing about you”, and when was it said?

            Diane Arbus, in the early sixties.

Do photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people?

            Yes, photographers tend to pick out marginalised subjects, and it has been of great controversy in recent years of the scholarship of photography. People who are exposed culturally, socially, economically.

Who is Colin Wood?

            Is a young, skinny, 7-year-old boy, who had his photograph taken in Central Park in 1962 by Diane Arbus. The image is funny, tragic and ghastly. She took many photographs of him that day, but she chose the photograph of him with the grenade.

Why do you think Diane Arbus committed suicide?

            She desperately didn’t want to be herself, she would photograph people she would see own anxieties and vulnerabilities in. She wanted to be anyone but herself and trying on everyone else’s skin through her photographer. Photography was her world, and it couldn’t sustain her.

Why and how did Larry Clark shoot “Tulsa”?

            He was a kid hanging out with a camera, he was one of ‘them’, the neighbourhood photojournalist, it was a part of America that nobody had bothered to see, especially that close up, he was taking pictures of his own life, taking drugs, shooting guns and getting laid. He wasn’t finding a scenario like other photographers, he was there already, he was almost recording like a diary, which is something he pretty much started. He opened up a whole new genre of photography, the impolite genre, a new nasty thing that nobody wants to know about. He initiated the whole idea of diary photography, which is an intrecal part of contemporary photography today.

Try to explain the concept of “confessional photography”, and what is the “impolite genre”?

            Confessional photography is where the photographer tried to break the shell of the sitter, putting them onto a pedestal to instead of letting them be photographed in the way they want to be seen, photographing them in a way that they actually are, revealing something private about them. Impolite photography is modern portraiture, it drew people in to an uglier post war world rather than the pre-package portraiture like there is with celebrity photographs, even now. Impolite photography is also diary photography, nobody wants to see it, but its recorded and it can be nasty and shocking but is a massive part of contemporary photography today.

What will Araki not photograph, and why?

            He doesn’t shoot what he doesn’t want to remember, otherwise he will shoot everything. He does this because photography is a way of remembering.

What is the premise of Postmodernism?

            Is that we now live in a culture so saturated in media imagery and media models of how people live, that our idea is how one lives ones life of who one is, is made up by that media myth. And a sense that negates the idea of portraiture, the idea that you can dress up and go to studio and somehow reveal your strengths and character or your inherit humanity, but you don’t have that in the world of postmodernists analysis of things, we’re all these composites of myths and narratives written by other people.

Lecture 4, ITAP - The Genius of Photography

Questions & Answers

Why did Garry Winogrand take photographs?

            ‘To see what the world looked like, photographed.’

Why did “citizens evolve from blurs to solid flesh”?

            Because in the long exposures of the older camera, people didn’t stay still long enough to leave a trace on the photograph, so when the technology changed in the camera, people started to appear.

What was/is the “much misunderstood theory”?

            Cartier-Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment’, other photographers were defined by this theory, many people tried to imitate it and many misunderstood this theory.

Who was the godfather of street photography in the USA?

            Garry Winogrand, driven to take photographs of the street, he had an appetite for documenting life.

Who was Paul Martin and what did he do?

            In1896, Marin went to the beach, Great Yarmouth, covering his camera with a brown paper bag, the pictures he took show the magic of the beach at work. At the beach you could forget what being ‘Victorian’ was all about.

Who said “When I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”?

            Ed Ruscha, an artist, no redeeming social value to someone who had a camera.

Why does William Eggleston photograph in colour?

            His career rests on the photographs he took in the early 1970’s onwards, of Menphas and the surrounding area. His pictures contain the acute detail of a street photographer, but they are brightly coloured make them unreadable. Democratic, at war with the obvious. Colour is more dominate than black and white, it twists the whole content, psychological colour to the viewer.

What is William Eggleston about?

            He takes his world with him, he doesn’t consider himself as part of a generation, he has always worked very alone. ‘He’s about photographing life today.’

Lecture 3, ITAP - The Genius of Photography

Questions & Answers

What is described as “One of the most familiar concepts in photography”?

         ‘A decisive moment’ was first shot in Paris by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It illuminated photography concepts for everyone.

Should you trust a photograph? (1.38m G3)

         Trusting the photograph was probably a huge mistake from the beginning. Photography has always been good at capturing reality, so people believe pictures, but photographers could pick and choose what to photograph – especially in a war zone. Photographs are good at effects but not what caused them.

What was revolutionary about the Leica in 1925?

         Compact, quiet, latest lens technology, gave birth to a whole new style of instant photography. Allows you to be present in the moment, and glide through the moment, the window is on the far left, so with your left eye you can still watch the world.

What did George Bernard Shaw say about all the paintings of Christ?

            ‘I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snap shot.’

Why were Tony Vaccaros’ negatives destroyed by the army censors?

         He photographed WWII on a regular basis, not as a professional, but as a regular GI. He was the only photo-journalist on the first wave of the D-Day mission. But his photographs were destroyed because they contained images of dead GI’s, decisive moments that world was not ready to accept.

Who was Henryk Ross and what was his job?

            A photographer, who kept a unique record of what really happened in the Nazi ghetto, incarcerated Polish Jews for 4 years. He was an official photographer for Wodge, employed by the department of administration and statistics. He made records of what was sold, i.d. cards, graphics department – promoting goods made in the ghetto, this made him be seen as a propaganda photographer, working with the other side. He decided to document the suffering of the Jews, as he could see it was getting it worse and worse. Wodge wasn’t a death camp but the Jews were deported to death camps and never seen again.

Which show was a “sticking plaster for the wounds of the war”, how many people saw it and what “cliché” did it end on?

Photography’s most public statement on behalf of humanity was the show ‘The Family of Man’ and in 1955, it was opened in New York, 500 images from 273 photographers both amateurs and professional. 5 traveling versions toured the world, letting in 9 million people by 1964, it was staged as a walk through version of Life magazine, it was the most popular photographic show of all time. The show ends on the cliché of W. Eugene Smiths’ own children walking in his own garden, out in to the light, the beginning of their sentimental journey through life.  

Why did Joel Meyerowitz photograph ground zero in colour?

            Because, photographing it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy, there is a tragic feeling to black and white photography e.g. war/destruction. 

Lecture 2, ITAP - The Genius of Photography

Questions & Answers

What are Typologies?

       The first typology made by Anna Atkins catalogue of algae, appeared just 4 years after the mediums invention. Just after 10 years photography was used record the criminal underworld, cataloged with police mug shots. Donavan Whiley photographs watch towers, from the same point of view, with the same lighting and the same framing. There has to be a direct view to the object, it’s a discipline in photography, it creates just the facts and nothing else. Can see clearer without shadows and sunlight.

What was “The Face of the Times”?

       August Saunder, did a typology of humans, this is when he became a modernist and published a selection of his portraits under the name ‘The Face of the Times’. He collected people and fitted them into a frame, people occupied the same amount of space in each photograph, but there were differences for each person. He used a system of several social types, for example the grouping of the farmers, then sub categories e.g. young farmers. It shows you how people want to be seen, not what is actually going on, but there is hints. A world that is pregnant with things that cant be spoken of, the chaos of German after WW1.

Which magazine did Rodchenko design?

       He designed photography magazine called, USSR en construction, it glorified the achievements of the soviet union. He took photographs with Leica, with freedom, not conventional photography. He thought that we needed to banish ‘belly button’ photography, he tried to make very apparent that he was photographing the world differently.

What is photo-montage?

       A graphic technique that took its cue from cinema montage. Rodchenko treated photographs as royal footage, suppressing their individuality, collectivizing their energies. Cutting, pasting, retouching and re-photographing them, he was creating dizzying scenes from the future. Photo-montage also shows up photographs for what they really are, mute documents whose meaning remains fluid.

Why did Eugene Atget use albumen prints in the 1920’s?

       Prints that came out in the sunshine, and were started to be used in the 1851. People tried to get him to use modern materials, and he told them he didn’t know how to do that.

What is solarisation and how was it discovered?

       Man Ray discovered solarisation through placing object in a darkroom on photographic paper and exposing it briefly to create interesting patterns on the paper, this happened in the late 1920s in the period of dada and surrealism. Through solarisation he makes people look as though their faces look like they’re made out of aluminum, they become super people, slightly inhuman, slightly robotic.

What was the relationship between Bernice Abbott and Eugene Atget?

         Bernice Abbott was a young American photographer and one of Man Ray’s assistants. Abbott photographed Atget as a living, breathing found object in 1927, she preferred the profile photograph, because he looks like an old man. Abbott also brought 5000 of Atget’s negatives to America.

Why was Walker Evans fired from the FSA?

         In 1935 he was commission to produce propaganda images for the Farms Security Agency, set up to ease the affects of depression in rural America. They were there to take the photographs for the Government, to support the aid methods, and to make the Government look good, not only the government but the recipients of relief. Evans hated the fact that documentary photography was ‘suppose’ to show the truths and was a social agent. He instead called his work documentary style and documentary aesthetic, to make the point it just looks like the facts, it in fact isn’t. He readily molded the world to his requirement, but he could not mold it to the requirements of the FSA, and in 1937 he was sacked.