I am a 22 year old girl who is trying to discover herself within the world of arts and fashion, at the moment i am studying graphic design and photography and it finally feels like home. I am a very visual person so i am easily touched by beautiful images and views i see everyday around me. Because i am emotional i experience incredible amount of happiness when i see something nice. I have not decided what am i going to be after i finish university but i know that i am on the right path and moving towards something very exciting. My aim in life is to show people what i can see and on the way im doing everything to achieve different techniques and ways of how to do so and what to show.
At the beginning of the second semester i was given a project to make film stills photographs as they were from a movie. I had to choose a film genre to start with and then produce six images that would relate to my chosen genre, so i picked film noir. The reason i chose it was because it included the film Sin City (2005) which had an intrusion of single colour in the shots which i thought would be useful to make viewers pay attention to some details.
During the project i have learnt how to organise a photoshoot, and how to add certain photoshop effects, the purpose was also to learn how to operate the lights and how they can bring importance and mood to an image. I did not have a lot of influences on this project but i did relate a little to Sarah Moon who uses sctraches and blurs in her images. Most of the influences came from the movie itself.
This piece of video i have made was for Graphic Design, it was my first attempt to stop motion video making and the theme was mirrors which was about your personal space, an object or a place. Without too much thinking an idea popped in my head that i have an interesting drawer box in my room. I keep a lot of drawing medium there such as pencils pens scissors glitter and whatever else i like to use to express myself. In relation to me my box drawer is quite similar to my character, sometimes i like to use pens and another time - pencils, just like my mood swings, it also has a meaning that every day is a different drawer. All the shots in the video were subconcious and all of them say something about me, my emotions, moods, my own little world.
The reactions to my video where very different, some where negative some where positive and some where completely away from what i wanted to show. Still most comments i got were positive but even after that i would like to change a few things and make my video longer and include more similar things such as the opening and closing drawer. I understood that whatever piece of work it is, all people wouldn't understand and have the same idea or a thought about it, they would each personaly relate to it and have their own nostalgic thoughts or memories reoccuring to them, only experienced thinkers would compare it to the basic knowledge and understanding and give the analysis a generalisation of mass opinions.
'it is not impossible to perceive the photographic signifier (certain professionals do so), but it requires a
secondary action of knowledge or of reflection.' -Roland Barthes
EXTRACTS FROM CAMERA LUCIDA
From The Photography Reader,
Edited By Liz Wells
Modernism came with the new era of technologies and new age machines to our world. At the time humanity split into two groups, the ones who approved of the new technologies and the other who didn’t support and were afraid of it. As an example, here is the classical Metropolis movie trailer which came out in 1927. Based on movie technologies it was made at the very beginning of movie making and there was still no sound or voice effects introduced, but the movie is flowing to beautiful musical pieces that interpret the events and actions, it also black and white as there was no colour introduced either. On the other hand based on movie effects this film was a real innovation at the time, it was even short in funds to be released as the production took a lot of capitals.
The film is based on a future prediction and the beginning of modern times, the machinery, skyscrapers and the future architecture. Looking deeper into the idea of the film it appears that at the time the feminists started to rise slowly which is portrayed as a female robot in the film. The fear of the machinery is also shown in the film which means that not everyone was ready for the new era and some were afraid of it, it is shown as an end of the Metropolis when everything is getting destroyed and the perfect world falls apart. There where arguments about this movie if it also touches some of the futurism, but the idea was denied because of the people broken down to middle and lower classes in the film.
Graphic Design A New History, Stephen F. Eskilson, pg. 227 German Expressionism, Laurence King
Film History, an introduction, Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, pg. 110-113, McGraw Hill.
Tibor is an interesting persona and a very creative graphic designer. He has quite a large variety of produced work: from flat images to three dimensional figures, all very bright and striking with brilliant ideas. Some of Tibor’s work is political and brave which probably came from his desire to study journalism in university. He purposely made his work explicit so it would catch people’s attention and attract the audiences.
Tibor Kalman has worked in ‘Colors’ magazine which is a magazine for ‘United colours of Benetton’ and here are some images from the magazine which are Tibor’s work.
First of all this image made me think ‘racist!’ as soon as I saw it, but then I took a closer look and I realised that there is nothing abusing about it, it was the other way around. Three hearts with colour name tags relate to skin colours of a Chinese black and white people. It shows that under the skin we are pretty much the same. Considering how usually Benetton makes posters, it’s always people of all the races together.
But here we have another of Tibor’s pieces and this time it is giving wrong ideas to audience. From the first glance the patient in bed has noticeable similarity to Jesus. The second thing is quite strange as the surrounding people look a lot healthier than the one in bed and this gives a contrast to an image and maybe a hint to obesity (but this is only my first thoughts on the image), as it turned out, the people in the picture are all family and the person in bed is suffering from AIDS and the photograph was used as a poster for the AIDS awareness and later won awards.
