Final Collage made from own photography

 

Evaluation

 

I chose the theme of “You are perfectly reflected” to base my collage on. I decided to stay away from taking the theme literally or at face value after thinking about things which came to mind when I thought about the phrase. I decided that some sort of reflective surface would be best to include, like a mirror or the surface of some water, but I feel as though that’s as literal as my thought process would possibly get.

I took a picture in black and white of myself, and a full colour picture of the large wall mirror in my home, since I needed those at least to create my collage. I cut the frame of the mirror out to use, and backed it with some black sugar paper, to create a background and the back of the mirror without glass, like a broken mirror.

I then cut the picture into an oval shape to roughly fit the mirror, and then cut broken shard shaped pieces out of the remaining pictures, sticking every piece down near the bottom of the collage to show broken pieces falling from the frame or on a floor of some sort, only leaving the section with my eyes on the mirror still. I feel like it personally represents trying to find myself, or a lack of self. I only kept the eyes in the mirror because I believe that the eyes are one of the most important parts of the body, and that they are the windows to the soul.

I think if I were to improve it, I would possibly take more care in how I arranged the broken shards, to perhaps add even more meaning somehow, like spelling words out, or creating some kind of arrangement out of them, rather than them just on the floor or falling randomly.

 

"Found materials" Collage

Collage Development

You are perfectly reflected -Development

My first thoughts: hall of mirrors, Mirrors, puddles, reflective surfaces, water, ice, looking at self in reflective surfaces

Further thoughts: Exploration of self, self-worth, how others see you, alternate personalities, breaking the mirror while looking in, Reaching into the mirror , self-confidence, kaleidoscope, symmetry, symmetrical beauty,

Broken/cracked pieces of self like shards of mirror glass, mirror frame.



Photos needed at least:  Self-portrait picture and picture of mirror  from home.

Collage Artist Research

 

Peter Blake

 

 

Peter Blake (born 25 June 1932) is a pop English artist, best known for his collages and printmaking. His best known piece of collage work is his collage sleeve cover for the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, below. It’s a bright and colourful piece of work that is easily recognisable today that celebrates many pop culture icons and celebrities.

 

I like this collage because it’s more geometric and neat, so it’s easier on the eyes, but it’s still bright and colourful like the rest of his work. It also seems to have an American theme to it as it contains American icons and culture, like the American flag and the target, and other pop art like Roy Lichtenstein’s work.

 

 

I also like this collage even though it’s a little cluttered and random, but in a good way. It seems to be made of raffle tickets, postcards, timetables and any old pieces and images, and a few obviously British little pieces Blake has found and kept.  It really seems to give off a nostalgic and classic sort of feel to it because of the kinds of things he’s used, and I really like it.

Photographer Research

Harold Edgerton

 

Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990) was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device. Edgerton was a pioneer in using short duration electronic flash in photographing fast events photography, subsequently using the technique to capture images of balloons at different stages of their bursting, a bullet during its impact with an apple, or using multiflash to track the motion of a devil stick, for example.

I really like Edgerton's technique and style because it aids discovery about how the world works and science. It feels like his own niche, to record how things move in slow motion, which is something no one in mankind can do with their own eyes alone. It's uncomplicated, fascinating and leaves you in awe about things that we would miss in the blink of an eye.

Yousuf Karsh

 

 

Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time. He was a master of studio lighting and aimed to bring out his subject's personality in his photographs, photographing the greatest people of the 20th century.

I like his style because he succeeds in his aim of bringing out something about his subject even in just one photograph, especially in the case of his famous portrait of Winston Churchill, for example. He captures how defiant he is in the time of war, reflecting Great Britain itself.

 

Peter Menzel

 

 Peter Menzel (born 7 Feb 1948) is an American freelance photographer, best known for his work covering technological and scientific subjects.

These three photographs are from his book Hungry Planet, a book that uses his photography and essays to demonstrate many weekly diets of families around the world, and how much they spend on their food in US dollars.
 I like his work because it is factual, and interesting to see what people from other countries eat in a week, and his pictures have this composition to them that makes it easy to compare them and to understand them.

 

History of Lens Based Image Making

The law of optics regarded since ancient times is basically as follows: Light travels in straight lines, and so when they travel from a bright source through a hole in thin material they cross and reform as an upside down image on a flat surface parallel to the hole. The camera obscura dates back to Ancient China and Ancient Greece, and was mainly used as a drawing aid to draw perfect proportion and perspective.

 

The first photograph of an image taken with a camera was made in 1816 by Nicéphore Niépce. It was made with a small, self-made camera and a piece of silver chloride-coated paper. The photograph didn’t survive because he couldn’t remove the remaining silver chloride, so the picture became entirely darkened by the exposure to light. In 1826 he made his first permanent camera image by coating a pewter plate with bitumen and exposing it inside the camera.

 

In 1879, the dry plate was invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time. Photographers no longer needed portable darkrooms because of this. Dry processes absorbed light quickly and so rapidly that the hand-held camera was now possible.

http://brightbytes.com/cosite/what.html
http://inventors.about.com/od/weirdmuseums/ig/Illustrated-History-Photograph/Dry-Plate-Photograph.htm

Typography in the enviroment collage