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Key Points of this blog

The following posts show important developments of my work.

Initial Thoughts
Here you can see my original ideas and how they evolved into my final project.

Typology Experiment
This post shows the beginning of my presentation ideas and it possibly what led me to produce a series.

Finally...
Here are the first two versions of my original image.

Living Dolls
In this post my photography starts to investigate feminism and some of the concepts I'd begun exploring whilst reading 'Living Dolls'. Here you can also see the idea of presenting my work as a series.

Crossover with Life Drawing
Here you can see the development of my main photo into the image used in my final project.

New Images...
In this post I start to experiment with the idea of pixelation and how it can relate to degradation and loss of identity.

Version 4
Here is where I applied the idea of pixelation to my work. This was my final design, although while printing the grays and the size of the pixelation was tweaked.

Finalising Presentation

After much fuss and worry, my prints are finally done.
The colour came out quite different on the OHP paper, more greenish and yellowish but I think I like it better.
I had to re-print a few because the prints are so delicate and I scratched a few, also because a few of them were too light to be seen on transparency paper.

Thinking that I was on the home stretch, I bought myself some double-sided tape for mounting and went in search of a suitable window, only to find that the prints didn't show up on a transparent surface. Some turned completely clear both on sunny and dark windows. Also, things in the background distracted me from the image.
So at the last minute I was now searching for a suitable wall, and once I calmed down I realized that the perfect space for my work was still available, so I guess I was quite lucky there.
I ended up mounting my work with pins an inch or so out on a nice white wall at the end of the corridor, so hopefully it catches a bit of breeze from time to time so that the images flutter.



In the end my presentation turned out better than what I'd expected. Mounting my images on the wall with pins looked better than a window display ever could, and I think it had more relevance to my subject matter due to the way it shimmers and flutters.
My only complaints about the presentation is that I didn't consider that the glossy side of the prints would look best, and how when I flipped them around they would then be backwards. Of course, no-one else realized that my prints were backwards, but it still bothers me.
My other gripe is that I put the prints up in the wrong order. At first I thought my new arrangement looked better but now I've decided that the original order would have looked much better due to a better balance of alternating light and dark prints.

Printing Dilemmas

So I finally Got my images to look how I'd like them to look and went to print them at school.

I had an epiphany that day with regards to how I'm going to print my images too. I was originally a little disappointed that I couldn't afford to print my image as a large enough window sticker, and I was worrying that even the largest poster size at most print shops was too small. So I'd come to the conclusion that It would be best to print the images out individually on A4 photo paper and then arrange them together with a gap. It was then that I realized that printing on OHP paper would also give me the transparency that I'd been wanting.

Now, I know that things are never supposed to work out when you're printing, so I was prepared for the fact that my images were completely the wrong colour on the properly calibrated monitors, and for the fact that the school computers run so slow that it takes the best part of half an hour just to alter a couple of colours, and I was prepared for my images to rebel and not allow me to change some of them.

I wasn't really prepared for a paper crisis though. Apparently inkjet ohp paper used to be really easy to get, but just since I needed it for my project, everyone decided to discontinue their stock.
What's worse is that I phoned up Stationery Warehouse and asked if they had any INKJET (with a capital INKJET) ohp paper, to which they say they had plenty. So I went all the way over there, and two employees double checked that it was the right stuff before selling it to me. I took it back to school and guess what? It wasn't inkjet ohp paper at all, but the prints had a lovely runny quality to them. Too bad they'd never dry. So I took the paper all the way back and waited 20 minutes for the supervisor to finish her coffee so that I could get a refund.
In short, don't go to Stationery Warehouse. They are dicks.

Anyways, in the end I ordered a pack of the real stuff from Office Max, simply because the guy who served me so so enthusiastic and eager to help. So now I have to wait until Monday morning to print. Lets pray nothing else goes wrong.

Version 4...

I've taken the idea of pixels and image degradation in relation to the loss of information and applied it to my earlier work.



Now the deviating image is surrounded by pixelated copies which appear more or less pixelated depending on how close they are to the red image. The closer they are, the worse they look and the more they blur in to insignificance.
This is following my theme of female ambition and showing the degradation and mediocrity of the social epidemic in which looking good is placed above doing what you're good at.

Now I just need to experiment to get the pixels the right size for the final presentation, so that the size of the prints doesn't obscure the poor quality.

Am I Beautiful Enough?

This is gonna' sound funny, but last night I had the idea for a project in my dream. After I was done dreaming about having a cute white bunny that went with me wherever I went, I found myself in a store reminiscent of The Warehouse. The display TVs were all tuned to the music channel and there was a brand new video playing in which a well known pop beauty was singing a song with a chorus that went "Am I beautiful enough for you now?" In the video she was wearing no makeup or fancy clothes and her hair was as if she'd just got out of bed. Some people agreed that she was still just as stunning without all the wall paint, while I heard young men saying "that looks nothing like her!" disapprovingly.

When I woke up I knew this was a good idea for a project, but I was a little hazy on what words were being sung, which gave me another idea. While I was trying to remember I thought of "Am I beautiful enough for you yet?" which would be fantastic to use as well. I figured I could create a photo of myself with no makeup captioned "Am I beautiful enough for you now?", followed by another photo of me with tonnes of makeup on with the caption "Am I beautiful enough for you yet?" highlighting the contrast between wholesome beauty and unachievable perfection.

When it came to actually processing the first photo, I took things one step further and used photoshop in the opposite way to what a beauty photographer would. I made sure all the details of my skin were in tact and even did my best to highlight my blemishes and dark circles. I tried to magnify the truth rather than concealing it.



I considered finding the text for this elsewhere and copying and pasting it like I did in my previous project, but I decided that I couldn't justify the reasoning behind it and that the plain text was more personal and thus suited the image.

Thoughts on prints and presentation...

I actually printed that photo that I was talking about a couple of posts ago. I printed the words separately on photo paper then cut them out and pasted them on to the original photo along with a real $2 coin, so that it looked like I'd got the words from a physical publication. I then stuck a strip of sellotape across the words but it pretty much became invisible and didn't really carry the ideas I wanted it to, so now I'm just pretending that it's not there. I also removed the words "top story", because although they referenced the kind of media that this images opposes, it didn't quite read right when I looked at it. The words also arranged much nicer once I changed it.

For this version I purposely pixelated the face to show the degradation of the image in relations to it's message.
"What is the cost of your lust?" - although this was just a series of words I found on the websites of tacky magazines and strung together, it still holds a meaning with various interpretations and connotations.
It can be referring to the price of the clothes and products needed to achieve the narrow vision of the ideal female image presented to us by the media, and at the same time it can be referring to the cost of conforming to such a vision for both the individual and feminism as a whole.
It can be talking about the kind of hypersexualized image created by achieving the image that is expected of us, it can also be talking about a lust for money and material wealth in relation to achieving the ideal vision of femininity.
The pixelated image reflects the degradation that can be caused to the individual from the thirst for wealth and "ideal" beauty, as well as the degradation to women as a whole when individuals are going out of their way to sell themselves as a form of success.

As well as a real $2 coin looking better than just a 2d image, I added this because there is an instant feeling of greed generated by real money. It makes you want to rip it off the photo and spend it on something trivial, but you know that you can not because it will ruin the artwork . It is this feeling of the unattainable that I wanted to create, as the airbrushed image of femininity that the media sells us today is also unattainable. You can spend all your spare pennies on foundation and shoes, but at the end of the day you still won't look like the girls on the magazine covers, because even the girls themselves don't look like that.
It could also be read as an option: you can take the money and spend it trying to achieve this image, or you can leave it and pursue more wholesome goals.
The coin is also placed over an eye, so the face is hiding behind money, whether it be money spent on makeup that also hides the face, or an industry that exchanges an unrealistic image of beauty for money. The coin could also be there instead of an eye, so that the money is the thing staring at you, challenging you to stare back at it and not be sucked in to it's trap.

I am most pleased with the size of this image. It's the size of a snapshot, something personal that you can hold and view by yourself. It's like a postcard or a letter addressed directly to whoever's holding it, challenging them to consider what it says.
To emphasize this I may stick a stamp on the back and address it to "you" or "womankind".

I am still unsure as to whether this can be made to fit in with my final body of work. I'm thinking about my presentation a lot now, and contemplating the possibilities of having multiple images, however I wouldn't want this to be on the wall. It would have to be something that was distributed and held. I could perhaps have a small series printed of the top image and distribute them during my presentation, but then there's the question of whether they just get handed to the females or the males as well? And where would I put them?