Wednesday 1 May 2013

How does the idea of distortion relate to the theme : inside, outside and in-between?

Lately, I have been looking at and researching different types of distortion, both in photography and fine art (a fine art example - Gerhard Richter). I have personally really enjoyed researching this idea, as I think that it has helped my experiments to become more interesting and it's also something that I haven't explored very much before, so it is completely different to my previous work and research. Out of the several themes that we were allowed to chose from for this topic ;

-movement and light
-space
-inner character
-the five senses
-the everyday

I finally decided to go with the theme of 'the everyday', after exploring some of the other ones at the beginning of the project, for example, 'movement and light'. Although I enjoyed the concept of movement and light, and I enjoyed experimenting with it, I decided that it would be better for me to go with the idea of 'the everyday' for my exam piece, as this was something that I hadn't looked at before, and therefore, as I mentioned earlier, was something new and different.

When I was creating darkroom prints, I placed some glass over the paper as it was being exposed, to make sure the paper was lying completely flat, but as I was developing the image, I saw that the glass actually had lots of scratches on it, but I thought that this made the image look more distinctive, which was a starting point for the idea of distortion, shown here.

I think that my photographs, and the photographs that I have researched relate well to the exam theme of 'inside, outside and in-between', due to the subject matter of my photographs. For example, a lot of my images have been of the outdoors - tree branches, the textures of the ground (grass, bridle paths, pebble beaches) relating to the outside part of the theme. The inside part is how I've edited, changed and distorted my images either in photoshop or in the darkroom. The in-between is the distortion between the negative and the paper, for example, the scratched glass, or the handmade negative method placed on the photo paper, which has water or salt on it to enhance the image. The theme doesn't have to be taken literally, and this is what I wanted to show with my work.


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