Week 10 | Photography

Photography

The Lives of Others.

Our new project is photography and our brief was based around the lives of other people. Upon hearing the brief I was a little sceptical, mainly due to the fact that, although I enjoy photography, I'm not that fond of photographing other people. 

The first week of the project revolved around studying the history of photography, we started right at the beginning with the history of the first lens. It was a small piece of glass that allowed for magnification. It was quite fascinating to learn how and when photography started.

    Besides that, our brief required us to document another person and so researching documentary photography was very key in getting to grips with this type of photography. I started to explore a range of documentary photographers and found one called Kitra Cahana.

Cahana is a female documentary photographer from America who has done some amazing projects exploring real world situations, crisis's and even just groups of people that she finds interesting. There was one project of hers which I became very interested in is her work with Nomads. The photographs she took were amazing, they were effective at capturing the adventure and mystery behind a lifestyle we aren't so familiar with.


These are a couple of my favorite:

This image depicts what must be a nomad inside of a train. The subject looks like a young male who looks rather worn out, tire and generally quite knackered. He is relaxing and enjoying a cigarette whilst the train travels. The atmosphere of the photograph is a very mellow one, this is largely due to the dark blue overtone that dominates the setting and feelings the photograph evokes, feelings of cold and wet. The flame on the cigarette is the only thing that is showing any sort of warmth and the nomad is the one cigarette, it could simply tell us that this particular nomad enjoys smoking or it could also suggest his constant search for warmth in the cold bitterness of the world. He has encapsulated himself within the belly of the carriage, again this could be for warmth, possibly protection or is he hiding? Hiding from authority, from certain people or hiding from responsibility. The cigarette is often associated with rebuking and rebellion against authority, an authority the nomad is possibly battling.

This is also one of my favorites, the photograph shows four young nomads enjoying themselves at a train station singing songs whilst they are either waiting for a train or planning to camp out on the platform overnight. Next to the group stand a couple who are noticeably less 'nomadic'. They are dressed differently as they clearly live different lives. Whilst the two bystanders live a generic, western, middle class life, the group of nomads live a far more complex life of survival, adventure and discovery. The two groups are physically separated by the space between them as well as the support beam in the frame. They are also socially separated. The use of the support beam between them, however accidental is may have been, has helped at enforcing the idea that these are two different types of people who share different values, goals and aspirations. It is interesting to note that the nomads are having fun and enjoyinh their time together whilst the two bystanders look eagerly over at them, almost enviously. Their behaviors differ. Cahana has used framing to capture the idea that although we are fundamentally the same, aspects of people's lives, culture and identity are different.

Documenting our Partners

After we got paired up we were tasked with creating a portrait that represented the individual we were documenting. It seemed like a brief introductory into documentary photography and this seemed like a good way to do it. My partner was Nicola, she claimed she was fun and enthusiastic and she wasn't afraid of the camera lens. That was great because I didn't have to worry about hiding her face or obscuring it in a way that she was happy with, that was better for me. I can be a bit more free with how I want to document her.

I wanted to be creative and because she said she is fun I didn't want a straight up portrait as that wouldn't exactly reflect her nature. I started to take photographs using extreme angles and using mirrors to my advantage so that the portrait would look interesting and exciting. Despite this it was difficult to have a variety of different shots, all of them turned out roughly the same as if they could have been in a series.

After a lot of failed shot attempts and failed ideas we went to the bathroom so that I could get a clean shot of her in the mirror. She said she was fun and generally a happy person, cheerful if you will so I asked her to stare at herself in the mirror and something amazing happened.. She started laughing simply because she was looking in the mirror which was brilliant for me and i definitely didn't pass up the opportunity to capture it

They were alright images, I felt they appropriately expressed the type of person she told me she was but I wasn't very happy with them. They were good but they were't quite Carling. I think the reason I didn't like them so much was because I didn't feel they were adventurous enough. 

Because of this I couldn't settle on this image and therefore took another couple of images whilst we were waiting for everyone to get back. However these images were taken without her knowledge.

This is the photograph I decided to use for Nicola. It wasn't staged which was the best thing about it, it was natural, it was Nicola in her most raw form.