Photochallenge #8: Found Text and the Urban Life

Ends: Friday, December 12, 2008

Brief: Find words or text that appeal to you anywhere in your environment. Wait for “something interesting” to happen, with pedestrians, with light, with framing, with angles! Anything creative that strikes you.

In photo challenge #7, we asked you to find things that were “not quite right”. We were amazed by the various submissions that we received and began to think of how our project offers this amazing opportunity for street-level exposure to so many urban centres around the world. Photo challenge #8 has further exploration of this topic at it’s objective.

Street photography became possible in the early 20th century when advancements in technology made it possible to carry a hand-held camera on one’s body. There was much excitement in the ability to capture “everyday life” as the common man experienced it. Street photography allows us to consider how what we see everyday impacts what we know about the world. Considering text as a common thread in urban life adds a common thread from which to view many street photographers’ works.

In the photography of Walker Evans, the visuality of urban life reveals important cultural information about his early 20th century work. At the time of his black and white street photography, capitalism was very much changing the appearance of city streets as the ability to mass produce goods brought about consumerist culture. As we readily recognize, urban street signage dots the landscape:

New Orleans Street Corner, 1935

What does this photo tell us about the urban setting in which it was taken? We can extract a lot just through a quick glance: what language is spoken there, what kinds of products are consumed there, what kind of cars are driven there etc. etc.. Objectively, it’s also relevant to look at the scene as a whole and consider how drastic the advertising really is in relation to the entire scene. Only the fruits and vegetables in the shop window remind us of the natural world and the resources that many of our products are created from.

Later, Fred Herzog mostly documented the changing streets of Vancouver, a city on the west coast of Canada, revealing again, the almost-overwhelming presence of street signs and advertisements, as the city moved from “backwater town” to a world-class city with many desirable goods and services for its inhabitants.

The above photo, taken in Vancouver in 1968, brings colour into the visual spectrum of street photography. The viewer is bombarded by brightly coloured neon and back-lit signage, “games, guns, movies,” “western gym,” “washington.”  

Most street photographers at this time were still using black and white, while Herzog preferred to work in Kodachrome, and shot on slide film. Although unnoticed for years, his work is now recognized as an important body of historical photographs.  Today, the colours, font and designs of those streets signs are associated with forgotten signage in dilapidated and run-down neighbourhoods. The fact that his slide films were just recently developed into prints for exhibitions provides an extraordinary opportunity to look at “new” prints that contain outdated cultural information, including fonts and colours that we no longer associate with contemporary  city scenes.

Arcade, 1968

Herzog also created some interesting use of text in his street photography. One word in the photo below hangs in the frame of a very theatrical San-Francisco moment. What is it about the word “only” that continually piques our curiosity each time we look at it? Here, Herzog has selected a moment in time, well aware of the text that lingers in the top of the frame, something we’re hoping our photo challenge participants will consider as they go out looking for inspiration.

Vercruz 96

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.

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!

Photo Challenge #5: Photo within a Photo

Ends: Monday, September 15th, 2008

Brief: Pick a photo in the Glocal flickr pool, print it out and create a new image by superimposing your chosen image on top of a backdrop that you have created. You can decide how to manipulate or interpret that backdrop, but please provide a link to the original image in your images’ description. 

Instructions: Tag your photo with “glocalproject” and “photochallenge5″ and add it to our flickr pool. Need help? Email us.

Our photo challenge topic this week was borne out of comparing historical references from the modernist photo movement with cool web art references. We’ve been inspired by the work of Kenneth Josephson  and the always entertaining web art of sleeveface.com. The contrast between the historical art reference and the web art reference seems to be a relevant challenge for Glocal, given that the project examines the history of photography while experimenting with the potential for mass collaboration on the web. We also like the concept of superimposition as a means to think critically about the uses to which photography is applied, both artistically and in popular culture.

Kenneth Josephson’s photos-within-photos create visual statements that prompt the viewer to think critically of photography, both as an art form and as a representation of reality.

This simple photo of a boat, held against the backdrop of the ocean, reminds us that an image is little more than a representation of reality and never reality itself.

On sleeveface.com, the concept is similar and repeatable. Contributing photographers select an album sleeve of their choice and re-create the scene outside of the borders of the album sleeve:

This beautifully positioned album sleeve lines up nicely with the newly created backdrop. It creates a new image that alters the original context of the album art. Like the Josephson image, the arm holding up the album both adds humour, and suggests that we are supposed to be aware of the layers between the images.

Unlike photographic re-creation (Photo challenge # 3 (re) Create), where the new image is a single layer and a re-interpretation of an earlier image, superimposing an image creates a new narrative that reminds us of the distance from reality that we experience as viewers.

Have fun!

For our last photo challenge, we asked you to experiment with vignetting – using toilet paper tubes! The response to this challenge was excellent. So excellent, in fact, that we have decided to send off Prize Packs to six of our entrants:

helen.2006, who used an empty plastic bottle as a vignetting tube to create this many-layered composition:

raysto, who used a keychain scene-splitter for a kaleidoscopic effect:

SoCalRacePics, who chose a ball endmill as his photo subject:

tamaraandalex, who created a set of floral images with a definite botany textbook feel:

JudyGr, who shot a reflective self-portrait through a tube wrapped in shiny wrapping paper:

And finally, hyper0nimous, who assembled a star-shaped montage of toilet-paper shots!:

Congratulations to all of this week’s winners. We’ll be sending you a Glocal Digital Camera Hack kit and other goodies – get in touch!

Photo Challenge #3: Tunnel Vision
Challenge Ends: Tuesday September 2nd

Brief: Shoot an image using a toilet paper roll as a vignetting device.

Instructions: Tag your image with ‘glocalproject’ and ‘photochallenge’, and add it to this our Glocal Flickr Pool. Need help? E-mail us.

In April, we posted an interview with Irish artist Peter Marley. For the Glocal Project, Peter shot a series of unique images using iris-in and iris-out effects. These images were shot using a surprisingly simple peice of photographic technology – a toilet paper roll. This week, we are asking you to create your own toilet-tube enhanced images.

The technique is simple – hold a toilet paper roll (or a paper towel roll) in front of your lens… and shoot! The resulting image will be not quite whole. As Marley explains:

“I am fascinated by the question and process of, ‘What is being excluded in the frame?’ The goal of this alternate method of taking photos was to playfully twist cinematic methods and as a result challenge the viewer to reassess common scenes and scenarios when they appear with intensified focus.”

The results of toilet-tube photography suggest vignetting, an effect that you may be familiar with from both photographic and film history. Originally, this vignetting effect was not intentional – instead, it was a result of limitations of lens optics, incompatible camera parts, or poor projections. American photographer Emmet Gowin used a 4×5 lens on an 8×10 camera to achieve a dramatic vignetting effect:

Vignetting is also a frequent result in photographs taken by toy cameras such as the Holga and the Diana. Similar to Gowin’s images, this vignetting usually results from the negatives being slightly smaller than the camera lens.

Wonderwall, by Flickr user wlwarner, shot with a Holga

Some of our Glocal Pool photographers are already using tube-vignetting. This photo from Eduardo Nasi uses tangible vignetting to excellent effect:

As always, feel free to post your comments and questions here. We’re looking forward to seeing the results!

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Var Department, Hyères, France (1932)

Photo Challenge #3:

Brief: Recreate the photo above, using whatever techniques necessary. Submit your image by uploading it to to Flickr and tagging it with ‘glocalproject’ and ‘photochallenge’. Need help? Don’t have a Flickr account? E-mail us.

Challenge Ends: Monday August 25th

Throughout the history of photography, artists have used the medium to re-stage scenes from history, to reference famous works of art, and to re-examine moments in time that may not have been originally captured. For this week’s photo challenge, we’re asking you to recreate the (???) above. You can choose to reconstruct the scene as accurately as possible, or you can re-imagine it in any way you see fit. As usual, we’ll select our favourites and send off a Glocal prize pack to each of our winners.

In the 19th century, staging scenes for photography was more of a necessity than an artistic choice. With exposure times of up to 12 seconds, subjects had to pose and remain still for long periods of time. In the 1840s, photographers like David Octavius Hill staged fairly elaborate scenes for their photographs. In 1857 British photographer Oscar Rejlander used composites of several staged images to create his well-known allegorical work, The Two Ways of Life (pre-dating the idea of ‘photoshopping’ by more than 125 years).

David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson Scottish Fishwives, Washaday Group (1843-1848)

Oscar Rejlander, The Two Ways of Life (1857)

More recently, a number of contemporary photographers have used similar techniques. Canadian artist Jeff Wall, in particular, has made extensive use of staged photography in his work. in A Sudden Gust of Wind) after Hokusai, he recreates a classic Japanese woodblock print:

Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind) after Hokusai (1993), and Katsushika Hokusai Ejiri in Suruga Province (1830-33)

Wall’s recreations are meticulous and typically involve an extensive system of casting, set-up, shooting, and digital postproduction, contrasting starkly with our typical understanding of the photographic process. Similarly, Israeli artist Adi Nes’ Last Supper recreates the famous painting in careful detail – using young Israeli soldiers in the place of the apostles:

Photographer Mike Stimpson makes even more drastic substitutions in his recreations – he uses lego to pay homage to some of his favourite photographers:

As you can see, re-creation in photography can take many forms – so it is up to you how to decide how to complete this week’s challenge. Realistic or non-realistic, perfect or imperfect – we are lookig forward to seeing the results!

 

Navy Pier Ferris Wheel, originally uploaded by peterlo72.

Two weeks ago, we asked people to take photos from unique perspectives – and to submit them to the Glocal Flickr Stream. The artists behind the selected photos would win our Digital Camera Hack Kits – everything you need to hack a digital camera.

Our winner, Flickr user peterlo72, took a photo from a unique perspective indeed: from the top of the 46 metre tall Navy Pier Ferris Wheel in downtown Chicago. The resulting shot is surreal – the saturated colours and sharp edges make the photograph feel more like a miniature scene than a real life setting. Thanks to Peter for a great contribution, and an excellent starting point for our Photo Challenge Series.

Which leads us to Photo Challenge #2! Our first selected submission was taken from a high-up perspective; this week we are asking for your photos taken from the down-low. Under tables, below cars, beneath the waves, from ground-level – be creative! Again, selected contributers will receive a free Digital Camera Hack Kit, and will be featured here on the blog.

So, to sum it all up:

Photo Challenge #2: Down-low

1) Take a unique photo from a low perspective

2) Upload your photo to Flickr and tag it with ‘glocalproject’ and ‘photochallenge’

3) Stay tuned to this blog to see our picks! If you are one of our winners, we’ll mail you your prize ASAP.