Final images

My final pieces are 6 individual photo montages but the way I would display them in our festival would be to have the actual physical montages stuck onto a plain wall all in a sequence. I don’t want my montage’s to be re-photographed and printed as one flat image and then mounted to the wall because I think the whole ‘hand crafted’ aspect to the work gives it a more personal, homely touch. I wouldn’t have glass or any other materials over the images to protect them as I’d want the edges of each photo to stick out a little, I want the closest and most raw connection with my work and the audience, mirroring the fact that emotions are a natural occurrence that we all relate to. Individually I think my images are strong in the sense that they’re visually appealing, a rare take on portraiture, they do portray 6 different emotions and the montage technique has highlighted the key theme ‘Change’ by resembling movement and growth. 

Overall each individual member of our group produced 6 images following the theme ‘Change’ and as all of our outcomes were very different and unique from each other, it told us that our ‘Change’ is a versatile and open theme offering lots of opportunities and ideas, just like what the CONTACT festival in Toronto does!

Emotions and Colour

As most people know emotions and colour work very well together in an artistic format. Most of us find it easy to recognize what emotions are being portrayed in a particular painting for example, just by the colours and tones, even when the subject matter is unrelated to any form of feeling.

Since deciding against adding coloured paint to my photo montages, I thought I could edit the eyes of my model instead using the same idea of portraying emotions through colour, I thought this would give my images a little more of an interesting twist as well as support the portraying emotion.

I did some research of emotions and colour and found an in depth writing on it.
http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

RED. Physical Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, 'fight or flight', stimulation, masculinity, excitement. Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain. Being the longest wavelength, red is a powerful colour. Although not technically the most visible, it has the property of appearing to be nearer than it is and therefore it grabs our attention first. Hence its effectiveness in traffic lights the world over. Its effect is physical; it stimulates us and raises the pulse rate, giving the impression that time is passing faster than it is. It relates to the masculine principle and can activate the "fight or flight" instinct. Red is strong, and very basic. Pure red is the simplest colour, with no subtlety. It is stimulating and lively, very friendly. At the same time, it can be perceived as demanding and aggressive.
BLUE. Intellectual. Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm. Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness. Blue is the colour of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than the physical reaction we have to red. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. It is the colour of clear communication. Blue objects do not appear to be as close to us as red ones. Time and again in research, blue is the world's favourite colour. However, it can be perceived as cold, unemotional and unfriendly.
YELLOW. Emotional Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity. Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide. The yellow wavelength is relatively long and essentially stimulating. In this case the stimulus is emotional, therefore yellow is the strongest colour, psychologically. The right yellow will lift our spirits and our self-esteem; it is the colour of confidence and optimism. Too much of it, or the wrong tone in relation to the other tones in a colour scheme, can cause self-esteem to plummet, giving rise to fear and anxiety. Our "yellow streak" can surface.
GREEN. Balance Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace. Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation. Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the centre of the spectrum, it is the colour of balance - a more important concept than many people realise. When the world about us contains plenty of green, this indicates the presence of water, and little danger of famine, so we are reassured by green, on a primitive level. Negatively, it can indicate stagnation and, incorrectly used, will be perceived as being too bland.
VIOLET. Spiritual Positive: Spiritual awareness, containment, vision, luxury, authenticity, truth, quality. Negative: Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority. The shortest wavelength is violet, often described as purple. It takes awareness to a higher level of thought, even into the realms of spiritual values. It is highly introvertive and encourages deep contemplation, or meditation. It has associations with royalty and usually communicates the finest possible quality. Being the last visible wavelength before the ultra-violet ray, it has associations with time and space and the cosmos. Excessive use of purple can bring about too much introspection and the wrong tone of it communicates something cheap and nasty, faster than any other colour.
ORANGE. Positive: Physical comfort, food, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun. Negative: Deprivation, frustration, frivolity, immaturity. Since it is a combination of red and yellow, orange is stimulating and reaction to it is a combination of the physical and the emotional. It focuses our minds on issues of physical comfort - food, warmth, shelter etc. - and sensuality. It is a 'fun' colour. Negatively, it might focus on the exact opposite - deprivation. This is particularly likely when warm orange is used with black. Equally, too much orange suggests frivolity and a lack of serious intellectual values.
PINK. Positive: Physical tranquillity, nurture, warmth, femininity, love, sexuality, survival of the species. Negative: Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness. Being a tint of red, pink also affects us physically, but it soothes, rather than stimulates. (Interestingly, red is the only colour that has an entirely separate name for its tints. Tints of blue, green, yellow, etc. are simply called light blue, light greenetc.) Pink is a powerful colour, psychologically. It represents the feminine principle, and survival of the species; it is nurturing and physically soothing. Too much pink is physically draining and can be somewhat emasculating.
GREY. Positive: Psychological neutrality. Negative: Lack of confidence, dampness, depression, hibernation, lack of energy. Pure grey is the only colour that has no direct psychological properties. It is, however, quite suppressive. A virtual absence of colour is depressing and when the world turns grey we are instinctively conditioned to draw in and prepare for hibernation. Unless the precise tone is right, grey has a dampening effect on other colours used with it. Heavy use of grey usually indicates a lack of confidence and fear of exposure.
BLACK. Positive: Sophistication, glamour, security, emotional safety, efficiency, substance. Negative: Oppression, coldness, menace, heaviness. Black is all colours, totally absorbed. The psychological implications of that are considerable. It creates protective barriers, as it absorbs all the energy coming towards you, and it enshrouds the personality. Black is essentially an absence of light, since no wavelengths are reflected and it can, therefore be menacing; many people are afraid of the dark. Positively, it communicates absolute clarity, with no fine nuances. It communicates sophistication and uncompromising excellence and it works particularly well with white. Black creates a perception of weight and seriousness. It is a myth that black clothes are slimming.
WHITE. Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency. Negative: Sterility, coldness, barriers, unfriendliness, elitism. Just as black is total absorption, so white is total reflection. In effect, it reflects the full force of the spectrum into our eyes. Thus it also creates barriers, but differently from black, and it is often a strain to look at. It communicates, "Touch me not!" White is purity and, like black, uncompromising; it is clean, hygienic, and sterile. The concept of sterility can also be negative. Visually, white gives a heightened perception of space. The negative effect of white on warm colours is to make them look and feel garish.
BROWN. Positive: Seriousness, warmth, Nature, earthiness, reliability, support. Negative: Lack of humour, heaviness, lack of sophistication. Brown usually consists of red and yellow, with a large percentage of black. Consequently, it has much of the same seriousness as black, but is warmer and softer. It has elements of the red and yellow properties. Brown has associations with the earth and the natural world. It is a solid, reliable colour and most people find it quietly supportive - more positively than the ever-popular black, which is suppressive, rather than supportive.

Not ordinary portraits

I didn't want my portraits to have one quality and what was just to show the emotion, I thought that's too bland and over done but as well as this I needed a way to show the rest of our features change over time so I thought I could create 6 photo montages, each one showing one of my 6 chosen emotions. I've done photo montage before and have always loved it, I don't create them digitally though, I take photos of my subject from different ranges then get the photos printed then physically put my montage together; I find this way easier, more entertaining to do and it gives the end result a more personal, hand made touch.

I wanted to use the different sized features and distortion to simulate the growth and change of the rest of our features while the eyes were changing because of the emotions.

David Hockney s a British artist who was an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960's. Hockney is recognised mainly for is photo montages.

This type of work gives a more exciting way of looking at a portrait of someone. It's recognizable yes distorted.  

I did look into more distortion work in the form of the paintings by Francis Bacon but I decided the montage would best represent growth and change rather than just movement.

Bacon's work did make me wonder if I wanted to incorporate paint into my work though. I thought I could emphasize the portraying emotion by using colour related paints and tones. I knew this could make my work become 'too into the ordinary' as colour and emotions are very often brought together but I tried some small mock ups to see what would happen. I was interested to see if the mix between painting and photography worked which then brought me onto a mixed media using artist called Bec Wonders.

This work is interesting, it;s very cyborg like and almost creepy. I'd like to do something like this for another project some time but as of now, I have bigger ideas for what I want to do for our 'Change' theme. 

Whilst still thinking about distorted portraiture I came across the Brazilian graffiti artist Andre Muniz Gonzaga and his work 'The distorted street faces'. Since 1997 he has been transforming some of the broken, cracked and ugly walls into strange, distorted faces in his unique style of street portraiture. 

His work gave me the idea of maybe taking my distorted portraits onto different locations. The locations could relate to the emotions which I'd be trying to portray with the portrait itself for example: A sad portrait could be taken of the model sat beside a hospital bed.

I quickly made some small, rough photo montages so I could test the emotional coloured painting technique over it.

I used my finger to pull the paint around the face. I do like the dramatic effect that comes along with the colour but I won't betaking this technique further because I feel as though the paint makes the image as a whole focus more on the emotion rather than the change in expression. 

Emotional portrait photography

I found some examples of amazing emotional portrait photography online. I want to find the best ways to capture emotion and which emotions are most recognisable when caught on camera as well which emotions are photographed most often.

http://psdcollector.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/portrait-photography-expression-of.html

Portrait Photography : The Expression of the Emotions

Portrait photography or portraiture is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people (a group portrait), in which the face and expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included. A portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the camera.

The photo above stands out to me from the rest on the site, there are about 20 other photos but this one has caught a genuine feeling. This image shows a moment in time where this little girl felt a certain way. The photo is called 'Stop killing people' by Surinda Singh. At first glance I thought the girl was on a playground sliding down a zip wire type of thing, I thought she was expressing fear from doing so and it's only because of a clearer inspection and help from the title that I'm assuming she's protesting. It looks like she's holding a sign up and shouting but the thing that interests me is how passionate she looks about the potential 'Stop killing people' protest when she's only a small child, because of this adult like quality she seems to hold, this photo is quite uncanny. 

Another site that caught my attention when researching emotions within portrait photography is the only shown below. 

http://www.dzineblog360.com/2010/12/50-inspiring-examples-of-emotional-portrait-photography/

50 Inspiring Examples of Emotional Portrait Photography

Photography is all about capturing and preserving the moments of real life forever. Photography involves expressions, inspirations and emotions all captured in one fine click of the camera. For good photography, camera, set and make-over is secondary. It is based on the aesthetics present in the person doing it. That is the reason it is said when it comes to photography, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the camera-holder”. This post gives you 50 inspirational examples of emotional portrait photography. Enjoy!

This photo looks to me like the man is showing great determination. The look to the right suggests he's moving that way, he's moving forward. The man in the image could be fighting something for example a disease. His face looks determined and like he's not ready to give up.

Emotions make our eyes look different

Since our theme is 'Change' and not the opposite which is what my idea seemed to be following, I had to think of a way to incorporate change into the fact that our eyes never change. I thought about growth and how the rest of our body and features change, I also thought of how we look at different things throughout different important stages in our lives for example: Babies spend the majority of their time looking at their parents or carers, or just looking up. Toddlers will look mostly at toys and colours. Children will have more of an outdoor view of things. Teenagers may look more at other people, friends, classmates, teachers. And adults may look at day to day things like cooking, cleaning and work. My last idea was how emotions make our eyes look different and even though I had a strong urge to move the second idea forward I decided the emotions idea fit in more interestingly with the fact that our eyes never change.

I did some research on emotions and what they do to our faces. I knew I Wanted 6 portraits of 6 different emotions so I knew at this stage all I had to do was to pick 6 interesting and eye changing emotions. I used my own thoughts to gather some and the internet. I came across an interesting online article about 8 different emotions which can be expressed with out eyes.

http://lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/emotions-you-can-express-with-your-eyes/

8 Emotions You Can Express with Your Eyes … 
You’ve all probably heard that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Regardless of whether or not that is true, the eyes are definitely windows to your emotions. Unless you have a flawless poker face, then chances are your eyes are going to give you away every time. Sometimes that’s not so great, but there are many occasions when it may be better to express your feelings that way. You can be subtle, for one thing, and you can be eloquent without ever saying a word. You can start out by examining some of the emotions you can express with your eyes.
1. Exasperation
Exasperation is an easy emotion you can express with your eyes, and I bet everyone reading has done it. You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? All you have to do is roll those baby blues, browns, or greens toward the sky. A well placed, well timed eye roll will tell onlookers all they need to know about how you feel in regard to what they’re saying.
2. Attraction
You know how Tyra is always coaching girls to “smize” with their eyes? This is kind of like that. You know how to show that you’re interested in someone with just your eyes, right? There are actually tons of ways to do it, whether you like to do a coy look downward or prefer a sassy little side glance. Every girl has a come-hither look.
3. Suspicion
Suspicion is another emotion you can express with your eyes. I imagine that everyone has a different way of doing it. For me, it’s a sideways look, from the corners of my eyes, typically coupled with a brow arch. Sometimes it relays frank suspicion; at other times, it’s all about skepticism.
4. Sullenness
Do you ever feel sullen or sulky? These emotions are different from mere pouting; they’re more serious, in a way. I bet you know this one too, though. It has to do with that telltale squint, maybe one eye, maybe both. Either way, it lets onlookers know that you are not happy.
5. Love
Some people get moon-eyed, some people get cow-eyed, some people get starry-eyed. There are thousands of ways to telegraph a look of love in your eyes. No matter how you do it, however, it’s an obvious thing – and a beautiful one.
6. Anger
Anger is a really versatile emotion you can express with your eyes. I myself can’t even describe the expression of it, though, and not just because it’s likely different for everyone. More to the point, it’s a look in the eyes. They blaze, they gleam, and regardless of the expression, a person can tell you’re angry when they see that look in your eyes. It doesn’t even matter if you’re smiling at the same time.
7. Sadness
Eyes express sadness very eloquently. Again, it’s not necessarily a squint or anything like that. It’s the look within your eyes that telegraphs the sadness you’re feeling. It’s not even necessary to pull off that sad-eyed Precious Moments face. Your eyes are far more eloquent than that.
8. Joy
Lastly, joy is the same way. There is something within your eyes, within you, that can reveal your joy to the entire world. It’s the way your eyes light up, with surprise or love or happiness. You need a really perfect poker face to ever keep this emotion from shining through.
There are many, many emotions you can express with your eyes – probably any emotion you can imagine, in fact. You just have to know when to be expressive, and when it’s better to keep your feelings inside. Do you prefer expressing your feelings subtly or do you like to be out in the open?
__________________________________________________________________________

In the end I came up with:

Exasperation - Irritation/extreme annoyance
The images below are google images that I used to get an idea of how the face looked when expressing this emotion.

Sulking Face:

Distressed Face:

Joyful Face:

Disgusted Face:

Relief Face: 

After gathering some secondary research I thought now would be a good time to pick my model, I chose my brother because he's been my model before, he understands how long it can take for me to get he images I want, we already have a relationship which means no awkwardness, he's good at posed expressions because I've taken expression shots with him before and his face looks natural and innocent which I need because the emotions need to look natural. 

Our eyes stay the same

When discussing ideas with my housemates on the theme 'Change' my friend Adam mentioned how our eyes stay the same from birth to when we die, I found this very interesting and immediately fell in love with the concept. I did some research into this and found this online article, http://www.whattheffacts.com/our-eyes-are-always-the-same-size-from-birth/

• Our Eyes Are Always The Same Size From Birth

  From the day we are born to the death, the size of our ear and nose keeps on increasing while the mass of eyes remains unchanged.

  Posted on February 22, 2012 by Haris

  According to scientists our eyes remain the same in size throughout our life but our ears and nose keep gaining bits of mass as we grow older. This may sound a little disturbing because most of us want the exact opposite. We’re coveted to have bigger eyes but they never change size, and fairly smaller noses and ears but they disappoint us by growing throughout our lives.
  Normally our nose grows slowly until about age 15 to 17 in women and about age 17 to 19 in men, says Rohrich, a specialist in the field. After these respective ages our noses keep on growing but at a very slow rate. And the growth of our noses is always downward because of the pull of gravity and the gradual breakdown of proteins, collagen and elastin in your skin, especially in the nasal tip.
  
  It is a very important part of our body which lets us smell more than 10,000 scents. As for the ears, they get bigger by 0.22mm per year on average and the reason is almost the same as for the nose. The cartilage in the ears also keeps growing and gravity helps the enlargement too. As far as the eyes are concerned, they grow on average only by 7mm till you reach puberty. That is 40% growth in the size from the original. The eyes stop growing after puberty and if the eyes keep on growing, there’s always a risk of myopia or short-sightedness. So if you think about it, it’s to our advantage that our eyes don’t grow after puberty.
  [Source: Doctoroz]

My 'Change' Ideas

When putting down ideas I prefer to do it in the form of a mind map or list.

Back on the right track

After being told that more or less the whole class had misunderstood the brief, our tutor told us what we were supposed to do. Rather than picking an existing theme from our chosen festival we were supposed to pick an existing festival and think of our own theme of which that festival could include. After long discussions within our small group we decided upon two main themes, either 'Change' or 'Invisible'. I personally preferred the theme 'Invisible' because I thought 'Change' was too much of an obvious choice but in the end we all happily agreed on 'Change'. After picking our theme we had to find our own individual photographers who's work portrays the theme 'Change' that we could include into out festival. I found an American photographer named Stephen Wilkes.

I have noticed a pattern of ‘Change’ throughout multiple series’ of his work, this may be an intentional move on his behalf or not. ‘Ellis Island’ is his most famous series of work, this is what he is known for. Wilkes focused on the ‘South side of Ellis Island’ for this series capturing the abandoned buildings of the psychiatric wings which were used to detain the diseased children and adult immigrants before letting them enter America. To me this series captures ‘Change’ because it shows the ghostly remains of what it was once like by capturing the empty wards and silent halls. Another series of work by Wilkes which captured ‘Change’ is his ‘China Old and New’ were he caught the vast developments and changes through industry within both rural and industrial settings. The series that stuck out to me the most however, due to it’s vibrancy, creativity and imaginative content was his ‘Day to Night’ series. 

Wilkes’s ‘Day to Night’ series is a collection of images showing the changing of time throughout the day all in one scene throughout different locations in New York City. Each image is made up of a around 50 photos that he took out of a selection from up to 1000 all taken of the same scene with the same perspective at different times of the day then blended together into one. He would sometimes spend up to 15 hours capturing the changes thus expressing his “deep love” for the city. He merges classic street photography and cityscape styles to capture “a definitive view of New York City’s epic scale, along with the humanity and energy which flow through the city’s streets.” 

I think this series would be a really interesting one to include into our ‘Change’ themed festival because it shows something we can all relate to and understand yet in a way that would never be visually open to us. We all experience the changes throughout the day and these images bring them altogether into one which allows us to see things we would normally miss and also allow us to compare the differences between night and day which otherwise we wouldn't notice. It is interesting to see what actually changes throughout the day, the lighting, the population, the amount of cars and many more simple things which we don’t pick up on as much whilst experiencing the time changes. These photos capture an amazing sense of time, it’s like a story being unfolded before our eyes. This series reminds me of a childlike, imaginative, and storybook theme, they’re fun, creative and magical. Due to the ease of the flow between night and day I can imagine myself being in the images and being able to walk from the day into the night. The time change makes it seem like the two halves of the photo show completely different places when in reality it’s the same place once again creating this magical, mysterious feel.

Misunderstood brief but still inspired

It turns out that I, along with everyone else in the class had misunderstood part of our brief. We thought we had to find a photographer who does work relating to one of the current themes at our chosen festival. I won't go into it much because obviously it's not what we were supposed to do but I did some research and found plenty of photographers who's work I thought fit the theme of 'Field of Vision'.

Firstly I looked at the photographer and his series that the CONTACT festival is incorporating this year. Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian photographer who specialises in social documentary photography and photojournalism. His series of work called 'Genesis' depicts the lives of both humans and animals and how they correspond with the earthly surroundings. We get a chance to look into the lives of something else, giving us a new field of vision.

I think Salgado's images are beautiful, they really do capture the relationship and lives between nature and human. The tones and lighting create crisp detail and the black and white allows for our eyes to smoothly drift around each image. It's an amazingly inspirational body of work.

I went on to research more photographers and artists who's work depicts 'Field of Vision' well enough to be included into our festival. I looked at the work of English painter Robert Barker who's paintings were described as panoramic.







I also researched Andreas Gursky who is a German visual artist who specialises in large format architecture and landscape colour photography. I've studied Gursky's work before in college when I was doing a project on patterns, I found it interesting and still do, how his work is so detailed and recognizable yet taken from such a far distance.

John Davies is another photographer that I found to portray field of vision in his work. He's an English industrial landscape photographer. He uses black and white for a subtle ad analytic style. His work takes two points of view, the positive and negative sides of the rapid growth of development and industry, it's up the viewer to take the image how they want.

I also started looking at distorted landscapes and made the link between M.C Escher's drawings and photos taken with a fish-eye lens. I thought it was interesting how his distorted drawings could be re-created in the from of a photograph!

The images above are Escher's drawings and the one below is a photo taken with a fish-eye lens.