Photo Challenge #7: Not Quite Right

Writing by Jer on Monday, 27 of October , 2008 at 2:20 pm

Photo Challenge #7: Not Quite Right

Ends: Friday, November 14th, 2008

Brief: Using any photographic technique, create an image that is somehow ‘not quite right’.

Instructions: Tag your photo with “glocalproject” and “photochallenge7″ and add it to our flickr pool. Need help? Email us.

With halowe’en fast approaching, we thought we’d take the opportunity to launch a slightly off-kilter photo challenge. This week, we’d like you to go out and shoot images that are unsettling – images that some one reason or another seem disquieting or not-quite-right.

Of course, we realize this request could lead us into some tricky territory, so let’s remember to stick to the usual guidelines: no violence or depictions of violence, and no obviously offensive content.

There are any number of ways to achieve an unsettling effect with photography. Sometimes, the distressing effect can be the result of combining two unlikely things, such as in this photograph by Diane Arbus, depicting a young boy playing with a toy hand-grenade:

Diane Arbus, Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City (1962)

Another common approach is to make changes to familiar objects, forcing us to question what we normally take for granted. American artist Gordon Matta-Clark was famous for physically disrupting architecture. His ‘building cuts’ consist of a series of works in abandoned buildings in which he removed sections, or cut away parts to create systems which have lost their expected integrity. The results are, in the truest sense of the term, unsettled:

Gorgon Matta Clark, Splitting (1974)

Similarly, Chicago artist Jeanne Dunning’s photographs of the human body ask us to question our ideals and phobias surrounding the human form:

Jeanne Dunning, The Blob 4 (1994)

Dunning’s photographs start to tread into the territory of the surreal. Surrealist imagery can be confusing and startling, and often describes dreamlike fantasies. In Arthur Tress’s staged surrealist photographs, children’s dreams were carefully reconstructed – the results are eery:

Arthur Tress, Boys Flying Dream(L) and Flood Dream (R)

Perhaps the most famously disturbing images in photography come from Ralph Eugene Meatyard. His haunting images, often populated by masked figures, dead birds, and dolls, are deliberately ambiguous. Meatyard was a great reader of philosophy, and his photographs are intended to provoke questioning and contemplation.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Romance (N.) From Ambrose Bierce #3 from Portfolio 3, negative 1964/1974

As we have seen, there are many techniques and approaches that can be used to create unsettling imagery. We encourage you to experiment with these and other possibilities as you participate in our latest challenge. As always, we invite you to join the discussion in our Flickr pool, where you can exchange ideas and advice with other Glocal participants. Good luck!

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