Making It Up : Photographic Fictions, V&A exhibition review

Making it up is an exhibition where photographers make things up with in photography, creating an event instead of informing people like documentary photography. The images in this exhibition are created by photographers to tell us stories, ones that are made up instead of showing us the truth, which we don’t expect, from this type of photography.

The photographs in this exhibition came from the V&A archives, images used from the 1850s to 1870s. The images show a clear representation of the photographers staging behind the lens. Staged photography has been around since the birth of photography. With staged photographs they are like film sets and the photographers almost become like directors. Symbolism is very key within staged photography as the photographer doesn’t always give a clear narrative so its up to the audience to read into the photographs by looking at the symbols shown in the photograph.

Within the exhibition is a great example of staged photography by Trish Morrissey with a photograph from her series ‘Seven Years’ which are staged images created using herself and her sister as models to re-create old family photographs, where they played the roles of both male and female family members. She went to the same locations as where the original photograph was taken. She tried to find clothes and props of the same era of the photographs finding them in charity shops and her parent’s attic. With these photographs Morrissey has made scenes, characters and even used props, almost becoming a photographer, director and actor all in one.

 

People usually expect photography to show truthfulness however throughout history as we can see in these images that photography can be used as a means of telling stories and making the audience read images as if they were reading a book. This exhibition lures in viewers to see into these made up tales created by the photographer behind the lens.

Jeremy Deller - The Battle Of Orgreave 2001

I am looking at performances that might shock a viewer if they saw it on the street, and it might not be clear whether or not the event is real or fake. I have looked at other performances people have done to get an insight to how they have done them.  I have looked at re-enactments like Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, 2001 as he had re-enacted a real event that he had witnessed as a young boy on TV, of striking miners being chased up a hill and chased through a village. It has since become an iconic image of the 1984 miners strike which was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. The strike was led by the National Union of Mineworkers. The Thatcherian government announced on 6 March 1984 its intention to close 20 coal mines, also revealing the plan to close over 70 pits. Mass walkouts and strikes began following this revelation in March, including the widely reported Battle of Orgreave between 5,000 miners and 5,000 police officers. The photographs are almost those of a war scene rather than a labour dispute. The re-enactment happened in 2001, with about eight hundred historical re-enactors and two hundred former miners who had been part of the original conflict.  He asked the re-enactors to participate in the staging of a battle that occurred for memory, alongside veterans of the campaigns help.

I am looking at performances which might shock a viewer if they saw it in the street and it might not be clear whether these events are real or fake. By re-enacting a real life event it is almost like bringing the past to light and not letting major world issues be forgotten or dismissed. We are taking documentary and making it contemporary by creating work that combines reality and fiction not just purely reality and fact like documentary photography was intentionally invented for. We are bringing to light the documents of world issues through the use art and performance. This work would not be shown in a newspaper or on T.V as its purpose is not to be informative but to be photography art works therefore they are shown in exhibitions or photography books. This new category of work is still falling under the documentary genre but the work is now more contemporary and photographers are purposely blurring reality and fiction, instead of just editing their work and then passing it off as their own. I love documentary photography but I want people to start understanding the news, journalism and documentation of our generation. The concept behind my personal practice is that I want to take events that are popular in the news at the moment and recreate a performance of them publicly, to get a reaction from an audience that if they would have seen the same real event on the news, as they just see it on a screen they would have little to no reactions at all. I want to do a performance that is fictional but it’s a remake of something that happened in reality, I then want to go onto photograph the reality and see how then yet again another audience react to these images of a fictional event. This idea stemmed from my own perspective because personally I watch the news and I'm shocked but I don't feel any emotion because I have no personal attachment because it's not in my country or in front of me. I am part of the new contemporary ‘documentary’ movement creating work the blurs reality and fiction.

Wounded: Legacy of War - Photographs by Bryan Adams

Wounded: Legacy of War is an exhibition of photographic portraits by Bryan Adams of British servicemen and women who have suffered injuries in Iraq, Afghanistan or in training. These servicemen and women celebrate their service and survival within this series of portraits, with these images they have told their stories about what happened to them and about their journey to recovery.





















These photographs are being presented publicly to give people a better understanding of the legacy of modern conflict. We see wars happening all over the world on T.Vs, in newspapers and online, however we don't always see the effects of what exactly happens to our servicemen and women. If we see what happens to them they are usually documented images from photojournalists on the front line, instead of portraits of individuals and we now have the chance to find out in-depth individuals stories of their deployment and life on the frontline and how they cheated death but lived to tell the tales with crippling injuries and go on to explain how they went through rehabilitation and reconstruction.


















The exhibition was shown at Somerset House, with the large portraits across three rooms which linked through to each other. The portraits were life size images on the walls, by them being so large showed how powerful the concept and what was in each image is so important. Next to each portrait of a serviceman or woman was their position and name, giving you the first insight to who they are. Some of the individuals wore their uniforms and some were just in their underwear to show the full extent of their injuries. I found this exhibition really moving and extremely powerful as I have never seen something like this done in this century, it gave me a real insight into the real extend of war and the effects it has on other human begins that are fighting on behalf of our country as they are also fighting to save the innocent, when they are only innocent people themselves. Each image had a spot light on them so that they stood out against the white walls which again made the audience understand how important the images are.

I have always wanted to do a project myself, where I have wanted to take portraits of people with disabilities, however I didn't know how to address the concept and had to move onto another project. I went on to look at fashion magazines and looking at how all the people on the front covers are made to seem perfect and what everyone should aspire to, they would not show old people or unfit people, people who are overweight or even some people with disabilities. I went of to do portraits of people that would not be seen on the front of fashion magazines because of their age, size and even disability. 

Karen Knorr: Belgravia 1979–81 and Gentlemen 1981–83

This exhibition displays two series of work by Karen Knorr. One series is Belgravia 1979-81 where she has combined photographs and text to explore the aspirations and lifestyle of a privileged group of people living in one of the most wealthy areas of London. Knorr explains that you cannot understand the meaning of the work in either the images or the text but instead the only meaning that can be given to this piece of work is through individual interpretations. Therefore every individual creates a new meaning for this series of photographs depending on how they read the images and texts together. 

In the second series Gentlemen 1981-83 Knorr also uses the combination of images and text, this time she is trying to examine the patriarchal values of the English upper classes. The photographs were taken in gentlemen's clubs in central London which are members only private clubs of a type usually influenced by politics and business originally set up by and for British upper class men. She uses humours text to highlight the some traditionalists views on these clubs as they didn't give full membership to just anyone especially the poor and even women. 

I like the idea of series of work not having a revealed meaning but instead one hidden or even work that does not even have one meaning but instead loads of meanings which change by each individual that looks at the work. Photography should be able to speak a thousand words as well as additional text each person should be able to read something different from a group of images. 

In the exhibition the two series was not clearly distinguished which images belonged to which series apart from small text boxes. I can understand why Knorr grouped both pieces of work together as they both combine texts and images but there themes are completely different there for they should have been clearly group according to series. 

I have recently done a series of work called "Objects Speak a Thousand Words" where I take portraits of people holding something of a loved one that has passed away. I take the photographs on polaroids so that they are instant, then I ask the participant to write below the image a word or phrase that reminds them of the person who's belonging they are holding or write down an emotion that they feel. From the images themselves they just look like portraits but to create a meaning in this series of work, it's what they are holding and the text that explains what the series is about.

Victorian 3D Photographs

Dr Brain May lends rare Victorian 3D photographs to Tate Britain. The photographs are displayed in 'Poor man's picture gallery': Victorian Art and Stereoscopic. The photographs are the hand coloured photographic equivalents of famous Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings from the 1850s and 1860s. Stereographs are made up of two photographs of the same scene taken from very slight different viewpoints, these images are then mounted side by side and viewed through a stereoscope, so that when the viewer looks through they just see one three-dimensional image. 

I found this exhibition interesting as it's the first time the original Victorian paintings have been shown alongside the hand coloured photographs. Within my own practice I am looking at how people don't always believe what they see on the news because it is just seen as an image on a T.V screen however they could react differently if the event took place right in front of them. I want to stage events that are happening in the news at the moment almost like a flash mob to catch a big reaction from the crowds and photograph and video reactions. However once I then take the photographs it's going to be a case of the viewers then becoming immune to the images, therefore I would like to try and make my photographs 3D so that the photograph seems realistic. 

'Stranger Than Fiction' Joan Fontcuberta - Exhibition Review

Stranger Than Fiction presents six of Joan Fontcuberta's pieces of work. Fauna (1987) Fontcuberta collaborated with Pere Formiguera, and they created artistic work that questions the authority and reality of museum displays, with the use of different visual languages; detailed notes and taxidermy animals.










Herbarium (1984) Fontcuberta photographs sculptural objects that visually look like plants that he sets out to describe and name as new plant species, he created the sculptures using existing plants and various man-made materials such as electrical wires and other textiles.









Orogenesis (2002) Fontcuberta uses a topographic computer program that converts map contours into three-dimensional landscape images, he uses old landscape paintings and photographs and using this program enables him to create new photographic imagery of new viewpoints of particular landscapes.





Constellations (1993) Fontcuberta creates believable images which look like the night sky, with the amazing view of thousands of stars, however this work is fictional as in fact it was created by Fontcuberta putting photographic paper on the window of his car, what seems to be stars are in fact insects, dust and dirt  what had collected on the window during his journeys.







Sirens (2002) In 1947 Father Jean Fontana found fossilised remains of a sea cow, which have features similar to that of a human. Fontcuberta created the story of the discovery of mermaid fossil that is entirely fictional, he done rearranging and replacing the fossils in the Provence landscape, then photographing them to use them as evidence to back up his fictional story.

Karelia, Miracles & Co (2002) Fontcuberta creates this work by looking at  interdenominational Valhamönde Monastery, where monks are said to learn how to perform miracles. Fontcuberta dressed as a monk and exposed these miracles as hoaxes by digitally editing himself into particular images, where it would seem as if real, it would be a miracle, such as walking on water.

Joan Fontcuberta's work investigates the truth and reliability of photography. Using different visual languages of journalism, advertising, museum displays and scientific journals, he creates documentary narratives that combine reality and fiction. Within most of his piece's of work the imagery is fictional while the stories behind the work is sometimes factual which Fontcuberta's tries to challenge in his art.

In the exhibition my favourite piece of work was Fauna (1987) where Fontcuberta collaborated with Pere Formiguera, and they created artistic work that questions the authority and reality of museum displays, with the use of different visual languages; detailed notes and taxidermy animals. They used taxidermy to combine existing animals to create new mystical creatures. These fake animals are made to seem as if they once lived on this planet. With the help of museum displays and journals which include fictional notes about these animals, alongside diagrams and skeleton drawings on the wall of what the animals bone structure would look like. Photography plays an important role with in this work as it supports this fictional project to make it seem as if it's a piece of documented history. They would place the taxidermy in spaces which would seem like there natural habitat and photograph them, making these creatures seem real. I really enjoyed this piece as so much effort and different visual languages were used to make something fictional seem so real.

I looked at this exhibition as the work in it, showed me how powerful photography is as it can make something fictional seem a reality. We don't always just believe photographs on their own, but if they are used alongside other visual languages and displayed in a certain way they can be believed as factual evidence, Looking at this exhibition i want to take reference and use photography and film to make staged scenarios of real events happening around the world seem like they are real, to try and provoke a response from an audience.