2nd A1 sheet

My second A1 sheet which i have now completed. The sheet is based on artists which i have looked at as part of my research.These include Mark Quinn, Mark Johnson, Jill Wooster, David Knight and Happy at One Hundred. As well as creating these A1sheets i am also documenting this in my journal.

independent study day 29/02/12

Wednesdays are my independent study day where i do work from home. I got up feeling quite run down and tired, i think i am starting to get a cold because my throat hurts and i have a headache, but will not let this defeat me.  I am finishing my A1 sheet off today, where i am sticking the arrows and symbols onto the sheet and also adding a few more images to cover the space. Also i will be putting some photos up of my first A1 sheet i did and my second A1 sheet once it is complete, and also other research i came across when i was at college yesterday. I also got a chance to speak to one of my tutors yesterday where i showed them my first proposal draft, which is writing what i aim to do for this project. He said that what i had written was a great start and other ideas which i had thought about doing for this project i should bring into this. One of the ideas was the relationship that a child and their mother has. We talked about my aim of the project which was to show the relationship between disabled people and 'normal' people and how they should'nt get treated differently just because they may look different. He suggested some artists such as Damien Hurst which was to do with the mother and child idea but could also link into the idea of disabled people.

1st Projects Proposal Draft

Since starting my art and design foundation diploma in September I have become particularly interested in photography. Taking part in various different activities such as life drawing, the importance of colour and experimentation, photographing things using a professional studio helped me to learn a wide range of skills at the beginning of the course. Taking these skills further I began to realise importance of pattern and detail, and learnt about new ways of creating typography and experimenting with taking photographs. This led to me specialising in Visual communication, and since then I have gained knowledge of different artists and designers, and this has helped me to integrate photography into my work. I have found by doing these projects that I have experimented using a torch in a lot of my photos, creating different effects depending on how I use the torch. I have also looked at photographers such as David Hockney, Weegee and Bill Brandt who have particularly inspired me to pay close attention to the detail shown in the photograph and also how I could present me work in a different way.

In my previous project I explored portrait photography, where I took photographs of my family. I want to take this further into my final major project and explore taking photographs of people possibly of:

my family again, but extending it so I take photos of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc.

or people  with disabilities

or other families, the different relationships that different families have

or the relationship that a mother has with their child

My aim of this project is to show different relationships, different personalities, different appearances, and different identities within photography.

My target audience will be the general public as everyone is different and have their own identity. In previous projects I have used a torch to light photographs and I would like to carry this on to light the photograph in such a way, that it will capture people’s eye and stand out in a crowd at the Dockyard. I will explore different kinds of lighting, by using different settings on the camera, different atmospheres and placing the torch on different areas of the face or body. A photographer that has particularly inspired me was David Hockney, he made photo collages, I made a joiner in my previous project, and would like to take this further by making a photo collage, that overlaps and is 3d, possibly presenting the photographs different  of wood, so some pieces of the photograph come out at you more than others. Another photographer that I have come across is Barbara Kruger who uses words on her pieces of work. This could help to think about perhaps putting words on my piece of work, or perhaps experimenting with silk screen printing, layering my work with words or some kind of symbol. I plan to go to the National Portrait Museum, to get a feel of different images of people, how much light is in the photograph? , how is the person sitting? , what facial expression does the person have on their face? 

studio day 6 28/02/12

Yesterday i was focusing on creating a second A1 sheet based on artist research which i found. After struggling to find photographers/artists that have done work on disabled people i came across a blog where the person had done a similar project to what i am doing and was able to gain some more names to research into.

                                                    David Knight

Jill Wooster 

I put this information onto the A1 sheet but photocopying and printing off images in colour and black and white. I started to add a layer on top of the images where i cut out some symbols and arrows which show the artists i am looking at. Didn't feel like i got much done when i got home, the cutting out of the symbols took a long time as i was sticking them onto foamboard and it was quite hard to cut out.

end of day 5

I have successfully carried out all tasks that i wanted to do today :). I wrote about the videos which i found yesterday and have just finished sticking in research and writing about Mark Johnson. After researching again today to try and find some more photographers or artists who have worked with disabled people i wasn't having much luck, so i asked my tutor for advice and they suggested that if i couldn't find anyone that i look at things which are similar such as people who have lost limbs after being in the army. Earlier on today i also had a discussion with my friends and explained my ideas to them. They suggested that i contact some charities that raise money for people who have disabilitiesand ask about whether i would be able to take some photographs of the disabled people. They also came up with the idea that this could lead me to possibly making a campaign using a charities logo and my photographs. After researching over the weekend about a charity i used to work for, the Ellenorlions hospice i contacted my manager and have arranged an interview to ask about the charity and what it does and also whether i could take some photographs of the disabled that the hospice cares for. I have also contacted some disabled people today who friends of mine know.

http://www.ellenorlions.org/

day 5 studio day

I have started the day by sticking in research into my journal which i looked at yesterday, and writing evaluative thoughts about the videos and the photographer Mark Johnson. Looking back at Mark Johnson's work today i came across a website with some more photographers who have photographed disabled people which i can now research into as i was finding it quite challenging when researching to find photographers that have worked with disabled people.

video 2- disabled woman forced into a care home

http://dl.groovygecko.net/anon.groovy/clients/readingroom/takingthedis/takingTheDis5.swf

Another video made by the same people, but this time it was about a couple who had been forced apart from living together because the woman was disabled. It shows the man being very lonely, even day to day things that we do such as going to the supermarket he feels lost without her. She now lives in a care home, but if the couple recieved the right equipment and special care they could have stayed together in their own home. The ad again looks at what effect this has on people even if they are not disabled themselves.

video 1- getting on a bus can be difficult

http://dl.groovygecko.net/anon.groovy/clients/readingroom/takingthedis/takingTheDis2.swf

This was a video i found which was based on a man who had a learning disability. He tired to lead a normal life, he worked in Marks and Spencer, but because he looked different it made his day to day life a lot harder. Simple things that we do everyday such as getting on a bus was more difficult for this man because as soon as he got in the bus people were laughing at him and calling him names. People who knew nothing about this man were judging him in the first 10 seconds of looking at him and just because he looked different they treated him bad. He says that even when he goes shopping people look down on him and don't always understand what he is asking for. The advert was campaigning to stop bullying and quoted that 9 out of 10 people that have a learning disability are bullied. I think that this is a really important message to get out to people, it is a great example to show how people can treat people with learning disabilies differently to people who don't and what effect it has on these people.

afternoon

I am back from work and i am now writing up research which i gathered this morning and writing notes on the short video clips i watched earlier on today.

research 26/02/12

In the process of researching photographers who have worked with people with disabilities and so far i am not having much luck. Despite this i have found some good advertisements who are campaigning for disabled people which i will make of in my work and it has lead me to finding out about some more charities which i could look into.

sunday morning

I got up this morning feeling quite tired after only 6 hrs sleep but after having a wash i feel a bit more awake. Its 9:00am and i am ready to start work. I have got 3 hrs to work and i want to get as much work done as possible in the time i have. I will research more into the ellenor lions hospice which is a charity which raises money for disabled families. I also plan to look at advertisements where they have used a disabled person in the ad.

a wasted day

An unsuccessful day, i got up very late and then i had to go to work which took up most of my day and have just got home after seeing my boyfriend. Work again tomorrow but i plan to get some work done before and after work.

end of day 4

I have successfully carried out all of the tasks that i wanted to today and have looked into more depth on Mark Quinn. I collected sources from the library where i highlighted some of the information from the books. Over the weekend i will watch the DVD i got about Mark Quinn and write notes about it. I will also explore into other artists work who have done similar things, and start looking into advertisements particularly on television which are based on disabled people.

start of day 4 24/02/12

I have quite a lot of book work which i need to do today after yesterdays trip to London. I will include leaflets and tickets that i collected yesterday, drawings of some of the things i saw, and photographs i took. I will then start looking more in depth at a sculpture called Mark Quinn and will go to the library to collect sources such as DVDS, books and information from the internet, which will give me more information on the sculpture.

London trip 23/02/12

Yesterday i was out in London where i went to different museums with friends. We planned to meet out tutors in Shoreditch, where we were going to go to a museum called Shoreditch independent gallery, however when we got there the museum wasn't there anymore and had been shut for some time. From Shoreditch we decided on places that we wanted to go and visit. My tutors suggested that i go to the National Portrait Gallery as there would be some photography exhibitions on. An exhibition that i wanted to go to was the David Hockney exhibition, however i didn't have enough money for it yesterday, so i plan to go back to London soon to look at his work. Instead i looked at some contemporary photographs in the National Portrait Gallery and was able to find out about some portrait photographers. Some of my friends wanted to go to the London Film Museum, although film is not what i want to focus on in this project it was interesting to see what kind of lights and equipment film producers use, which could be linked to photography. There was also some photographs based on some of the films, where the photographs looked quite old fashioned, some had a sepia effect, others were black and white but out of focus and quite grainy. These effects are something that i could explore within this final project as my final outcomes will be presented in the Historic Dockyard in Chatham where the building is quite old and a lot of the building is made out of wood. Although i didn't gather much information yesterday whilst in London, the information i did collect is something i can research in explore more in depth. In the next two weeks researching for this project i will look at what exhibitions are on and start to look at some more artists who have taken photographs of people with a disability, and then hopefully go up to London with a clearer idea of what i want to look at and explore more in depth.

Completed my A1 sheet very happy that i have finally done it as it felt like it took forever to do. I am considering to add a few more words to the sheet, but i am happy with the outcome and have added colour to the sheet to make it look more visually interesting.

this blog is confusing

I want to add friends so they can write comments on work i have been doing and posts i write but don't know how to do it :/

tired too early

Was planning to get up at 10 and finish around 4 today but my brother woke me up instead and am now awake and tired. Will really have to motivate myself to get work done today. My aims today are:
1. To get my A1 worksheet done
2. Write more on this blog
3. Research more into Mark Quinn and stick this information in my journal
4. To go to some of the local charity shops which support disabled people

unproductive evening

I managed to get a evaluation of day written in my journal, however after this i decided to go out and didn't get any more work done, will have to catch up tomorrow.

Tonite i want to focus on journal work, writing up my evaluation of the day, research Mark Quinn in more depth and start to put images on my blog to show people what i have discovered today.

I managed to get most of the work that i wanted to get done today. I started to do research into Mark Quinn which my tutor suggested to me and mainly just looked at images of his work. I thought some of them were quite horrible to look at but it got the message out that disabled people shouldn't be unrecognised just because of the way they look. He also focuses on babies, the baby before it is born, and the development of the baby in the mother during the 9 months it is in the womb. I thought this was quite interesting and i had never really thought of pregnant woman is being classed as disabled before. It has made me think about maybe taking some photographs of a woman who is pregnant. Tomorrow i plan to write some research about Mark Quinn in my journal and also stick in some of the images i looked at today. I also want to finish my A1 sheet tomorrow as i didn't get to spend much time developing ideas on it today as i was catching up with some previous work.

Day 2 of the final major project. i have started the day by sticking some photos in my journal of the space that we will be presenting our final piece in at the historic dockyard in chatham. I then wrote about how my work could influence that space, i thought about perhaps hanging photos from the wooden beams or maybe adding a sepia effect to my photographs as the building is quite old. I spoke to one of my tutors yesterday and told them about my idea of taking photographs of disabled people and he suggested that i should look at campaigns/advertisements which use disabled people, and also some photographers, he suggested Mark Quinn who i want to look at this morning.Below are some images of Mark Quinns work.

i started my A1 sheet where i drew my ideas and drew things such as different disabled signs, different studio lighting that i could use, a torch, a studio. I plan to finish this sheet tomorrow and also add some effective typography, maybe making tect look 3D. When i got home i continued with work, i finished some drawings from the other day when i was at the Dockyard in Chatham and wrote some thoughts of the day in my journal.

Day 1 of the FMP

Today is our first day of the final major project. For this project i want to take a series of photos of about four or five different people who are disabled in some way. In my previous project i took photographs of my family and my sister has a condition called autism. Taking photographs of her was very different to everyone else i was photographing. It challenged me and i would like to challenge myself more by taking photographs of other people who have a disablility, as i feel that this would help me communicate more effectively with
 people i am photographing. The first thing i did today was  to clear my space where i
work, to create a clean space to start making work. Then i gathered into a small group of fellow students who i didn't know very well and we shared our ideas for this project. I found this useful because i got to hear other people's ideas and found out that another person in the group is also interested in photography. She in particular gave me ideas of how to light photographs and suggested that i could do face shots of the people i photograph. We then filled out a critical review form which helped us to write down our ideas for our project, but also to reflect on previous projects, where things went well or didn't go well and how we could take that further to this final project. I am now working on an A1 sheet where i am drawing the ideas i have.