ABOUT PORTRAIT
Portraits are everywhere, from homes, museums to art galleries. Portraits can be paintings, drawings, sculptures or photographs which represent peoples identity and aspirations. Earlier in history before portraits became famous many people would have had only one portrait painted in their lifetime, if at all, so artists were selected with great care and expectations were high.
BRAINSTORM-PORTAITURE
FACE RECOGNITION
The photographer Myra Greene creates portrait images of herself using traditional photographic processes.Throughout her work she focusses on different parts of her face as a process of recognition and exploration.
Myra Greene was inspired to take these photos by the Hurricane Katrina one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of US, and racist comments in response to articles in New York Times. The technique she used was wet plate. She wanted blackness to be part of the picture and for that she used black glass. Her intention was to answer the question : do we judge character by brief recognition? And she did this by focusing on the key features of the face. She intended to make us think about wether we still classify people by the way they look.
Response to Myra Green
After we discussed about the work of Myra Greene in the classroom, our assessment was to take picture of parts of our face. Below is my work. These pictures were taken either in the photography studio or at my home in my own made up studio.
Photos of Family and Friends inspired by Myra Greene
Our homework was to take pictures of different members of our family in the style of Myra greene with the intention of creating a visual representation of the person without showing their full facial portrait
DARKROOM TASKS WITH SAYAKO SUGAWARA
In this lesson we did experiments with photos in the darkroom. We used varied techniques to create prints, such as wet tissue, water tank, oil, spray development and many others. Here are some examples of my work.
For this print i sprayed the developer on the it and especially on the eyes to make them more intense and severe. The developer splashed on the rest of the face giving us the idea that it fading away. After I altered the image on photoshop to give it more contrast.
On this photo i did the same as on the previous one giving more emphasis on the lips.
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Here i used another technique. I put my paper in a tank with water and oil and then exposed it for a few seconds. As we can see the face is bright and tracing.
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GEORGE TOWN-LEWIS KHAN
Lewis Khan is a famous award winner photographer. In 2014 he published his video called Georgetown. This video describes the life of Lewis childhood friend George who lives in Brixton. They used to play football together in the streets and usually share the same space.
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Response to Lewis Khan
For this task we had to go around the school and take pictures of different people who work in the Fortismere School and their work enviroment. As you will see below are some pictures of the stuff and their belongings.
This is the security guard. His office is in the front entrance of the school.
This is the Biology Lab and the Science Technician.
And the last one is the Reception Office of the school.
SECOND RESPONSE TO LEWIS KHAN
Our half term assessment was to capture the everyday life of a relevant person to us, so i decided to take photos of our neighbours and good frinends Mr George and Mrs Ntina. The couple live in Muswell Hill at the same road as us, they both are from Cyprus and for many years but the most of their lives lived in London. First i would like to tell you some things about these two amazing person.
This is Mr George. He is born in a village called Pendaya in Cyprus in 1942. Between 1955 and 1959, during his youth he experienced the struggle of Cypriots for Independancy of the island from the British Rule. He arrived in England for further Education in 1960 at the age of 18. He attended the Northwestern Polytechnic University for Acountance and to improve his English. During the invasion of the Turks in the island in 1974 George was in England. Pendaya his village was occupied by the the Turkish Military when the invasion took place, and its still remains occupied till today. For the interview Mr George wanted to share a very special memory of him. When Turks occupied the island , they vandalised the cemetery where his parents were buried in 1964 and they also took away all the crosses form the graves. In 1964 he started his own workshop with his other two brothers together and they named it Costa Brothers. The family business is still operating. He married Mrs Ntina in 1973 and they are married for 42 years now. He is very good with technology, he is very passionate with his work and loves chestnuts.
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This is Mrs Ntina. She is born in Petra a village in Cyprus in 1950. She came to England in 1969, because of the jobs chances these years in London, nine years after George and she studied Economics Micra in an english university. A very memorable experience of hers is when she nearly died from a poisonous snake as Cyprus is famous for its many venomous snakes. At the beginning when she first came here she worked at the London City. In London she met George and they got married and since then they both live together in an refurbished victorian house in Muswell Hill. In 1992 she became a techer and till now she works as a supply teacher only a few days a week. She likes cooking , especially Cypriot recipes and taking care of her flowers and her garden. She has two grandchildren wich she loves very much.
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Below are some pictures of their home and things they like. Mrs Ntina was a bit shy that day so in the photos of her as you will see , you wll not be able to see the whole face although Mr George was willing to take full portraits if him, either standing or doing something.
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MY THREE STRANDS
For this assessment we have to think of the three strands of our projects and develop them. We could get ideas from potraiture photographers and develop our own idea
FiRsT StRaNd: CrEaTiVe SkEtChInG
For my first strand I decided to take images of a family friend. I stood him up in front of the wall and took different images. Then I asked him to make diferrent expressions with his face and hands and to wear diferrent clothes for each one of them. I took around 80 images with around fifteen diferrent poses and clothes. I could say my images are as I expected them. Although in some of them there are shadows on the backgound because of the light on the wall and the backgound is slightly orange. After I took the images, without any Photoshop altering I created a gif in Photoshop. Here is a useful link on how to create a gif :
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-create-animated-gif-quick-tip-ht#sm.000018pkp6rzg1do5y34yb9yucvsz
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-create-animated-gif-quick-tip-ht#sm.000018pkp6rzg1do5y34yb9yucvsz
Artistic Influence: Ben Watts - Big Up
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Ben Watts born in 1967 is an English photographer based in New York. His work has been published in many famous magazines like Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar. The "Big Up" series is a book published in 2003 through Princeton Architectural Pres. It is an artistic book with images that Watts took from 1990 when he came to New York from Sydney College of Arts. His portraits feature rappers, actors, boxers, dancers, skateboarders, children, and other street characters. As Watts says he was fascinated by the energy and the faces of the youth culture in New York. After he took the photos he used simple materials like crayons and pastels and drew on the images shapes and line depending on the tone of the image and the expression of the person portrayed. He used bright colours and often his sketches look like scribbles. I really like the effect of the images as they are not simple casual portraits but an artistic expression of the youth in 90s.
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My response:
SeCoNd StRaNd : PhOtOsHoP FiLtErS
Third Strand
Artistic Influence - Sebastian Del Grosso
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