Gabriel, who was born in Surrey, had a helping hand from Aardman Animations who provided Claymation, pixilation and stop motion animation that bought the images used to life. While filming, Gabriel led under a glass sheet for 16 hours, one frame at a time. The scene with the two headless raw chickens is when Aardman Animation’s Nick Park, who was refining work in plasticine animation at the time, used stop motion animation. The scene where he was wearing a Christmas tree suit and jerking around, he was actually being shocked. The lyrics of the song are a collection of sexual innuendos with references to steam trains, bumper cars, roller coasters and fruit that are used as metaphors for the female and male sexual body parts. In total, the video was shot in one week.
Natural - I enjoy Aaron Siskind's work, I have researched him before as part of the documentary photography I did in school, where we looked at graffiti and a 'worn away' effect on pictures, we made quite a few of these images in school and they were really interesting. Aaron does a lot of natural photography, from what I've seen, he does a lot of textural pictures and shapes. Aaron worked in both New York and Chicago, he only realised his like for photography after he received a camera as a wedding present and took pictures on his honeymoon.
Constructed - I prefer John Davies work to Andreas Gursky because I feel like Andreas' images are too busy, I feel like there is too much going on in the images and it's not particularly something that appeals to me. So I decided to do John Davies instead, even though the thing I don't like about his images is the fact they're black and white. A lot of them work out nicely black and white, but it just feels like some of them could do with some colour, like the image to the right.Andreas Gursky is a German photographer who was born into a family of photographers with his dad and grandfather being photographers, whereas John Davies worked his way by getting a foundation degree after growing up in coal mining and farming communities.
My own constructed images -
I found that my images, despite my dislike in his work, took most of the inspiration from Andreas' work. They have a similar perspective view and colour feel that Andreas' work has. The first image I tried to take inspiration from John Davies work, but I tried to make my image how I think his images should be where they lack colour, but they're not fully black an white.
Experiments - I found myself taking pictures of both natural and constructed images in one. For me it seemed more interesting than just doing one or the other. So I ended up taking pictures of things like rusted metal and plants growing through tracks.
Edvard munch's The Scream - There's a lot of speculation as to where Edvard Munch got his inspiration from for his most famous painting 'The Scream', but majority of them are similar and all relate to anxiety and depression. According to Wikipedia, the painting was a view from road overlooking Oslo, close by to an asylum his 'manic depressed' sister Laura Catherine was staying at the time of the painting. I think it's interesting how much people analise the painting, for all we know it could just be a very simple picture. I personally, due to own experiences, think it's because of anxiety.
I tried to make my image more 'camera tech' than emotional like Edvard Munch's, I got the two people in the back to look as natural as possible so apart from the person in the front it didn't look staged. The location wasn't the best but I still feel like it shows the perspective well enough.
Perspective - We were told to take one point perspective images as part as the Edvard Munch pictures as his painting was a perspective image and this introduced us to taking perspective into account when taking pictures. These are my one point perspective images.
Gallery Reports -
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize
1st place - Maria Teichroeb by Jordi Ruiz Cirera
2nd place - Lynne Brighton by Jennifer Pattison
3rd place - Mark Rylance by Spencer Murphy
4th place - The Ventriloquists by Alma Haser
The John Kobai New Work Award
The Taylor Wessing exhibition was held at the Mshed, Bristol which is located on the docks. The location is very good for tourists as it allows beautiful views and places to visit as it is just a few minutes walk from the centre of town. The Mshed itself is a very nice building and it suits the gallery space very well. The building is very angular and has a lift accessible, as there are a lot of stairs, but the stairs are also aesthetically pleasing. The room the exhibition is held in is a one way sort of system, it's also 'zig zaggy' as you walk through until you reach the middle section of it where it opens up a bit more and has a little seated section like most galleries. I liked the lighting of the gallery space because of the open windows and the lights above are enough to see the images without leaving glare on the glass. All of the images have a little information tab next to the which always makes the images more interesting because I personally like to know how the photographer perceives their own image.
