Review

The theme for the exam was Inside, Outside, In Between. I thought of different starting points that I could link to this such as inner character, 5 senses, the everyday, space and light and movement. I decided to follow the path of 5 senses. Within this there is a wide range of things to explore like the different 5 senses, body parts, surgery etc. Within the theme of 5 senses I thought of basing mine around different foods and the senses they apply to. Originally I wanted to link my photographs to all 5 senses by photographing specific things that relate to each sense but that would have made my ideas very broad. I changed my idea to only focusing on a few. I labelled my theme as foods. 

I looked at the work of Stephanie Gonot and Helen Chadwick who both work with food/meat.I liked the way they both made their photographs grotesque. Helen Chadwick photographed raw meat and organs combined with materials such as gold leaf and fabric to make the meat seem less gruesome, where as Stephanie Gonot photographed sweet food such as ice cream and jelly then manipulating it by mushing up the jelly and making the ice cream run down the hand to make them seem less appealing.

 Both take the same route in ideas but explore it in different ways. I applied this to my work. For my first film I focused it on food that looked quite fleshy such as salmon, liver,minced meat and pomegranate. I tried to shape the liver and minced meat to look like organs such as lungs and the brain. My first film was mainly for experimentation of techniques rather than following a particular path. My second film was based on inspiration by Helen Chadwick, I photographed grotesque foods such as fish skin, strips of raw meat and raw meat. Before taking the photographs I arranged them on fabric and added elements such as sugar coated sweets and shiny tin foil to make the subject seem more appealing. One of my favourite photographs was of pepper storks placed on a pile of tea leaves with cabbage leaves. I liked this composition because the way I had arranged it made it look like flowers in a flower bed which takes away from the fact that they were foods that had started to go off and decompose. My third film was inspired by Stephanie Gonot as I photographed sweet foods such as melt in the middle chocolate cake and jelly and ice cream but included the chocolate oozing out and the ice cream melting over the jelly to make them seem less appealing. 

I've experimented with a wide range of experiments and techniques. Handmade negatives, solarisation, reversals, combination prints, post production, tinting prints, liquid emulsion, sandwich prints, masking, selective development and collage. I experimented with handmade negatives to make it look like microscopic images. I have only ever used materials such as washing up liquid, salt and food colouring for handmade negatives but the use of materials is limitless. As long as it can fit in the negative carrier it can be used. As my theme is food I wanted to in keep with it so I found some rice, golden syrup, oats, flour and other different foods. These resulting in really good microscopic looking images. Solarisation is a really easy technique that results in good outcomes. I never know what the right way to solarise is, whether it should be more grey or more black, but I don't think there is really a right or wrong way to solarise. Handmade negatives, solarisation and reversals are quite simple techniques so I wanted to try something a bit more challenging. I tried combination printing by using the photos I took of body parts and experimented with exposing the photos I had taken of liver and minced meat into the parts of the body. I was unsure how it was going to work but I just went ahead and tried different attempts. First I exposed the body part to the paper and remembered where I wanted to expose the negative of the meat. I used my hands to cover the areas of the paper I didn't want to expose on to. This didn't quite work as areas overlapped. I tried again by cutting out a oval shape out of black card and using this instead of using my hand. This worked and I was really pleased with the outcome as it looks like you can see through the skin to the muscle. I had never used liquid emulsion before and have always wanted to experiment with it. I wanted something original other than using different types of paper. I thought why not print food on foods. I tried printing on different types of food but it was hard to work out what setting they needed to be on. This is something that I want to experiment with again. 

 

The experiments I want to take further is the liquid emulsion and some post production experiments. I haven't really explored many post production experiments yet and after doing so I think I will have a clearly ideas as to what I want to do for a final outcome. During the two weeks before the exam I want to try and explore as many different experiments in the darkroom and post production. I also want to explore some digital experiments as I don't have that many. However I prefer darkroom and think that there is a much wider range of experiments that I can do in the darkroom with my theme. I want to experiment with cinemagraphs as I think they are really interesting and can trick the mind which may be a way to explore for a final piece. I want to achieve a final piece that reflects on all of the work I have done so far to showcase the variety and limitations of experiments and materials.