The Object

Edward Weston

Nautilus - 1927

This was the year that Weston made a series of "monumental close-ups" using items such as peppers, shells and halved cabbages. When looking at the photographs in this series, I am really reminded of the human body, this is because of the shapes of the shells and peppers. For example the photo on the left at a quick glance looks like a woman kneeling down (from above). The more you look at it the easier it is to see that it isn't human due to the smoothness and markings of the shell but it still has a likeness to our form. After making that connection it is very difficult to remove it.

Laura Letinsky

This image, shot in 2002, has been taken from a series called 'Hardly More Than Ever'. The series of photographs show the remnants of an event that had happened during that day, a meal or social  gathering. All of the images in this series are well lit with a main focus, in this image it is the table at the bottom of the frame. There are no distractions apart from what is on the table which I suppose would give you the narrative of the piece. The sundae glass (empty) with two spoons either side potentially left from the night before, but then there look like there are stains around the back of the table which at the moment are confusing and maybe don't fit with my first thoughts of a romantic evening and now make this quite an eery image. 

Keith Arnatt

Pictures from a Rubbish Tip, 1988-1989

Images of decomposing food which have been photographed in a way where the qualities are transformed to make them delicate and make them look as if they have been painted. It is quite an odd piece to deconstruct because the camera position is quite close, this takes it out of context as you haven't any idea of where it is or what is going on around it.






Just a bit of initial research, I am going to look into Vanitas paintings some more as I started looking at them for our summer project, have already started looking at some other photographers which I will be writing about soon.

As well as researching into the above, to help me further my idea I will be researching into the Medway area. I want to look at the people of Medway eg the drunks, lovers, sinners and saints (couldn't help squeezing an Alexisonfire song in there). But seriously I want to look at the drunks/jobless, young mums and the small amount of people that work in the area and make a still life to portray this.

I might just take one of these to portray.

Still undecided.

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I have found a bit of a connection with Keith Arnatt's work 'Pictures from a Rubbish Tip' and have a better idea of what I would like to construct as my still life. The other day walking through Chatham I couldn't help but notice that there were an awful lot of young women that were either pregnant or already had several children. One pregnant woman that we passed was pushing her toddler in a pram smoking away as if her life depended on it.
I felt that this underpinned my idea of the downfall of the medway area along with the drunks that gather in the car park opposite my flat.

So basically I want to take this

along with this 

to create my still life with the inspiration of works by Keith Arnatt

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Today my group had our tutorial for 'The object', I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to get my idea across so this morning I wrote as much down as I could to make things easier.

(You may not be able to read my writing)

I was able to get my idea across, but it was quickly pointed out that I had several ideas that I wanted to put into one image. So I was looking at alcoholism, youth pregnancy and the effects that substance abuse has on unborn children. All of these things I have seen while walking around chatham.

I made some notes during the tutorial, which are about just one of the three things I initially looked at.

The basic gist of the notes above is to research into the effects alcohol and smoking has on unborn children, research pregnancy statistics for Medway, look more into Todd Mclellan's Disassembly series as a way of setting out my still life.

Todd Mclellan - Disassembly

This is possibly a bit to bright and 'clean cut' for what I want to portray but then again looking back at Keith Arnatt's work we see rubbish that looks like a painting. This is also another thing we talked about in the tutorial, transforming something horrid and displeasing into something that pleases the eye until really looking at it and figuring out its not as it seems.


I was also led to 'Things Organised Neatly' which is a curation of pictures.

I find it interesting that some people will organise things so neatly, where it seems no one has the time to do anything these days. Looking at this blog has given me a few more ideas of how to compose my still life.

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In my search for information on the effects alcohol and smoking has on unborn children, I came across this http://ehealthmd.com/content/how-do-smoking-and-drinking-affect-pregnancy the next piece of information is from that site:

Cigarette smoke and alcohol can damage the health of unborn babies.

Smoking by pregnant women is associated with low birthweight and premature birth, as well as higher rates of illness (colds, bronchitis, ear infections, etc.), breathing problems, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in their babies. Birth defects of the heart, brain, and face are also more common among babies born to smokers. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy tend to be physically smaller than children of non-smokers, and may continue to have higher rates of respiratory illness, such as asthma, for many years.

The effects of drinking alcohol during pregnancy are also alarming. In fact, the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy is the leading cause of birth defects. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a collection of defects that may include any combination of reduced growth (before or after birth), facial deformities, a small head (likely related to reduction of brain size), and abnormal behavioral development.

FAS is by far the most common non-hereditary cause of mental retardation. In addition, pregnant women who drink are more likely to miscarry. Children of mothers who drank during pregnancy are more likely to have severe behavioral problems and attention deficit disorders, even if they have no obvious physical defects.

The piece of information from http://www.usask.ca/medicine/prevent/fas.html goes into a bit more detail about FAS than above.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or FAS, is a pattern of mental and physical defects that may occur in some individuals whose mothers drank a lot of alcohol during pregnancy.  FAS is a life-long condition -- a child with FAS becomes an adult with FAS. 
Characteristics of People with FAS
There are three groups of characteristics present in an individual born with FAS:
1. Growth Deficiency
Babies born with FAS are noticeably smaller than other babies. Their growth does not usually catch up" to that of other children. They remain small throughout their lives.
 
2. Central Nervous System Dysfunction
 Poor growth of the central nervous system may result in intellectual and developmental disabilities, short attention span, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, poor muscle tone and poor coordination.  The brain also fails to grow, staying smaller than that of other individuals of the same age.
3. Facial Abnormalities
 The face of a baby with FAS does not form in the usual manner. The result may include small eye openings; drooping eyelids; flat, wide nose bridge; thin upper lip; flat groove between the nose and the upper lip.
In addition to these three groups of problems, individuals with FAS often have other health concerns. Abnormalities of the skeleton, cleft lip and palate, heart defects and other internal organ problems are common in individuals with FAS.
All of these characteristics can be present in people who do not have FAS.

Found an image that shows what FAS looks like in a child

So, I have my shoot for this still life tomorrow. I have quite a good idea how I want to compose the piece and want to focus on this 


Fetal Alcohol syndrome


2. Central Nervous System Dysfunction

 Poor growth of the central nervous system may result in intellectual and developmental disabilities, short attention span, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, poor muscle tone and poor coordination.  The brain also fails to grow, staying smaller than that of other individuals of the same age.

I have a doll that is quite small and another doll which is slightly larger so this would show one has FAS and the other one doesn't. I am going to cut into the head and fill it with parts of alcohol cans to try and portray the intellectual and developmental disabilities. To show the short attention span I will have the doll holding something but looking away at something else and the rest of the scene will be a play area, nice and bright, colourful, but littered with empty cans and bottles.

I would also like to try and tie in the effects of smoking on babies but I think that there may be a bit too much going on within the image to get both messages across clearly, so will just shoot the FAS idea.


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So last week I shot my still life, within the shoot I played about with the lighting and composition. At first I wanted to make my still life look like a bright toddlers play area so I bought a couple of dolls and a colourful foam play mat to give this effect. I also took with me lots of beer cans and wine bottles etc to try and portray the FAS. 


My first composition (Clearly these haven't been scanned in yet, and have not been colour corrected properly)

Laid out rather simply, with soft bright lighting as I wanted it to have that welcoming play school feel but then when really looking at it you begin to realise there is more going on than you first thought. This has quite a shallow depth of field as I want the main focus to be on the dolls and the close surrounding area. I think the set up works, but to have pulled this off completely I should have thought about a backdrop, lots of kids drawings or posters that you would find in a play school or nursery. The reason for having the letters showing was so that the viewers would question what it meant and keep thinking about it until it bugged them so much that they had to research in to it. This shot didn't really turn out the way that I wanted it to, but that is apart of photography, I tried a composition that didn't work for me and moved on.


Before I shot the next composition I had a discussion with my tutor, we spoke of a few ideas and the fact that the doll I had cut some of the head off of was quite interesting. And by having it on its own it made it a better focal point. I decided that I wanted something darker, more provoking. So by moving my set on to the floor and changing the lighting (and also changing the lens of the large format camera) I have hopefully achieved this. I placed the doll in an almost religious way with the arms spread out, I then wanted the cans of alcohol etc to look as though they had exploded out of this dolls head, spraying across the room. For the lighting I made it look like some light was leaking into a room through a door that was slightly ajar. This gives the effect that the baby has been left there by the parent and because its eyes are closed suggests that its innocence is being taken away without it knowing.

I was a bit concerned when I looked at this negative because I wanted the shadow area to be much darker, as if this doll was surrounded by dark. so in the dark room after doing my step wedges I started to experiment with dodging and burning to create the image that I wanted.

This picture does't really do the print justice, but you can see that the composition and lighting make this image a darker story than the first composition. A poor defenceless 'child' stripped of its innocence due to its mothers alcoholism.