Moving Image 3 - The Work of Director Chris Cunningham

1. How did Bjork and Chris collaborate on the All is full of love video?

Bjork and Cunningham had mutual friends in London and after the Apher Twin video a lot of people suggested that Bjork should contact Chris Cunningham. Bjork wanted it all to be a short video, she described that she wanted it to be a white frozen “erotic” heaven that melts with love. Cunningham liked engineering and robotics so he came up with the idea. The video was done after the album as a different project.

Bjork - All is Full of Love

2. What techniques were used on the portishead video to create the unusual slow motion effects?

The people in the video were shot in the tank of water and then digitally inserted in the location, which was the alleyway of a street.

Portishead - Only You

3. What other music video directors have gone on to direct feature films? Name two and the feature films they have made.

Spike Jonze (Adam Spiegel) – he collaborated on music videos with Weezer, Beastie Boys and Bjork. He moved onto feature films and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for his “Being John Malkovich” 2002 film.

Bestie Boys - Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win

"Being John Malkovich"

David Andrew Leo Fincher – Won a Golden Globe for his 2010 film “The Social Network” and also received nomination for Academy Award for Best Director for his 2008 film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. As music video director he worked with multiple artists like Madonna, Billy Idol, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, George Michael and Michael Jackson and many more.

Aerosmith - Janie's Got A Gun

"The Social Network"

4. Which famous sci - fi film did Chris Cunningham’s work on before he became a director?

He worked on the Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I (Artificial Intelligence), then he decided to go into film director career.

"A.I (Artifical Intelligence)"

5. What makes his work different or original compared to other similar directors?

Cunningham work has more sexual ambiguity, much darker, more violent and more inclusive of technology. His work has general sense of strangeness or creepiness. 

moving image part 2 - Cinematography

1. What is the role of the cinematographer in film making?

Cinematographer is also directed as director of photography in the  movie set-up. He/she is a chief of a camera and lighting crews, he/she is responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions relating to achieving certain results in the image.

2. Why did director Roman Polanski insist on using hand held camera in the film Chinatown?

He insisted on using hand held cameras in order to achieve more intimate image and also get the camera to the places where other video makers couldn’t before. His images would also look more spontaneous as the actors would look more natural, this would make the viewer more involved in the movie, making them feel like they are part of it themselves.

3. Name two films which use colour in a very symbolic way, and describe what they suggest. 

“Days of Heaven” (1978) – It was shot mostly at time when sun has just set or just before it has risen, which means there was no sun on the sky at all. This was director’s requirement; during that time there is also certain quality of colour. This made the movie feel more romantic, dreamlike and enchanted.

"Days of Heaven"

4. In the film Raging Bull why was the fight scene filmed at different speeds?

Fighting scene at “Raging Bull” was filmed at different speeds in order to achieve two different meanings and points of view to the fight. The real time action, showed how fighting is portrayed by people, while the slow motion moments show more emotional side to the same scene, showing the views of how the actual fighter might feel and what real effects it has on him. This sort of idea let the viewer get more involved with the boxer who gets beaten. It also makes the movie look more dramatic. The close up slow motion shots show the impact of the hit.

"Raging Bull"

5. Who is the cinematographer for the film Apocalypse Now, and what is his philosophy? 

Vittorio Storaro who is regarded as one of top cinematographers in the world. His philosophy was based on Color Theory by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which Wolfgang questioned Newton’s ideas of light and colour. According the Wolfgang different colours have different affect on our brain’s perception and have influences on people and situations.

Moving image 1 - Sam Taylor Wood

1. List two specific key relationships between Sam Taylor Wood's photography and film work?

She tries to convey a powerful and personal message in both of her works: photography and moving image.  She only uses people and emotions to narrate the story.

2. How does the use of multi-screen installation in her work reflect narrative?

It allows viewers to feel almost like they are part of the story, and technically they can narrate it themselves instead of having the narrative told to them. This sort of screening gets the viewers experience they cannot have while watching any other moving image work. Wood has been inspired by The Opera House in order to create her multi-screen installation in her work.


3. What other photographers use film as an integral part of their work. List two with examples?

Hollis Frampton he was an American avant-garde filmmaker, photographer and pioneer of digital art.

Michael Snow is another visual artist I came across; he works in painting, sculpture, video, films and photography.

4. Research three other Video artists and explain their working philosophy.

Tim Burton – Tim Burton, he is a contemporary artist and has done some typical “Blockbuster” movies, however what I personally like about his work is the animations he has created. He is known for dark and quirky-themed movies. Characters in his animations have specific face shape, usually longer thinner face with round almost circular eyes. Lots of them have also thin long legs. The monsters in his animations and movies have some similarities, being almost like a “trade-mark” of the artist.

examples: 

"Vincent" - This is Tim Burton stop motion animation 1982

"Corpse Bride" - Animation created in 2005, please note the character of Victor has similar characteristic to Vincent

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" - 1993, The character of Sally has similarities with Corpse Bride

"Beetlejuice" - 1988, the monster pictured here, is really similar to the monster which is shown in "Vincent"

Salvador Dali - Spanish Surreal artist widely known for his imaginative surrealistic paintings, he also worked in collaboration with Philippe Halsman to create great photographic outcomes. He also worked in moving image creating series of surrealistic pieces of silent movies, which faced a lot of critique and left many people surprised if not even shocked by the way he challenged their conventions.

Lotte Reiniger – A german animator, she used silhouette’s of the characters, locations and props in her animations, showing that message can be passed through, by simplicity without much focusing on facial expressions and details. She created few short movies, which were mostly based on children’s tales, for example “Hansel and Gretel” or “Cinderella”

Papageno 1935 

5. Show an example of a specific gallery space or a site specific location where
a video artist or film maker has created work specifically for that
space and been influenced by it.

Stuart Rosenberg has been influenced by the story of the haunted house in Amityville, USA so he took his crew to New Jersey in order to film “The Amityville Horror” the film was released in 1979. This is the infamous Amityville House in New Jersey America:

Genius of Photography 6 - Snap Judgements

1.How many photographs are taken in a year?

80 billion

2.What is Gregory Crewdsons modus operandi?

Gregory Crewdosons mudus operandi is when he organises single scene to create on photograph, it looks almost like filming scenario. He technically takes role of director of photography and camera operator. He uses cinematic lighting in order to make his photograph look perfect. To him camera is just a necessary tool in order to capture that perfect moment he artificially created, he doesn't even take the actual photograph himself..

3.Which prints command the highest price & what are they called?

Prints, which get the highest price, are the ones printed by a photographer himself/herself close to the time they were taken. They are known as “Vintage”.

4.What is a Fake photograph? Give an example and explain how & why it is fake.

Fakes are copies made of the photograph on the purpose of being sold out in the market; they are duplicated without the actual negative.

5.Who is Li Zhensheng and what is he famous for?

He used to be a Red Army news soldier and photojournalist who in 1960s and 1970s found himself covering Cultural Revolution.

6.What is the photographers “holy of holies”?

Is a photojournalist agency Magnum

7.How does Ben Lewis see Jeff Walls photography?

He says that Jeff Walls took photography back to 19^th century, back to paining where everything can be created or constructed.

8.Which famous photograph was taken by “Frank Mustard”?

the photograph which is known to be Camille Silvy’s photograph – “River Scene, France”

Genius of Photography 5 - We Are Family

1.Who said “ The camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can’t help people knowing about you”, and when was it said?

Photographer Diane Arbus said these words. It was said in New York in the early 1960’s

2.Do photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people?

Photographers always looked for some sort of marginalised subjects, it might mean that they might prey on vulnerable people.

3.Who is Colin Wood?

Colin Wood was a son of tennis player Sidney Wood, and he was in Diane Arbus’s famous photograph – “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park”. She managed to get the unusual and fascinating face expression from the boy.

4.Why do you think Diane Arbus committed suicide?

The lack of acceptation for herself has driven her to commit suicide in my opinion. The fact that she wished to be someone else throughout her whole life didn’t obviously bring her the happiness she needed.

She seemed to be quite interested in photography but I guess this wasn’t enough for her to cherish her own life and identity.

5.Why and how did Larry Clark shoot “Tulsa”?

Tulsa was Larry Clark’s book published in 1971. It was series of photographs based on his own life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It showed an inside point of view on life of drug addicts. He made photography look as personal as the written diary.

6.Try to explain the concept of “confessional photography”, and what is the “impolite genre”?

Impolite genre was something created by Larry Clark’s photographs; it makes photography look more informal and more intimate. Confessional photography I would say is something like telling the story about your life and surroundings throughout photographs, which is a quite personal subject for some.

7.What will Araki not photograph, and why?

Technically, there is nothing Araki would not photograph, however he says he won’t shoot something he doesn’t want to remember.

8.What is the premise of Postmodernism?

 It is that media influenced our lives and culture, giving us ideas of how people live. The ideas of individual’s life are made up by the myths from media, and we loose that sense of personal identity trying to be someone else. This obviously affect portraiture photography the most.

Genius of Photography 4 - Paper Movies

1.Why did Garry Winogrand take photographs?

Garry Winogrand said that he “took photographs to see how the world looks like photographed”.

2.Why did “citizens evolve from blurs to solid flesh”?

Previously, the life on the street moved too fast for long exposure times, so photographers had to carefully plan and setup any movement in the photographs, or were showing empty streets, which looked like “post-apocalyptic ghost towns”. “Citizens evolved from blurs to solid flesh” when technology caught up and allowed photographers to use shorter exposure.

3.What was/is the “much misunderstood theory”?

Cartier-Bresson’s theory of “the decisive moment”.

4.Who was the godfather of street photography in the USA?

Garry Winogrand

5.Who was Paul Martin and what did he do?

He was a British photographer. In 1896 he went to seaside with a camera disguised as a brown paper parcel. He took photographs, which showed a magic of a beach at work, and how people came there to forget about what being Victorian meant.

6.Who said “When I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”?

Edward Ruscha

7.Why does William Eggleston photograph in colour?

He said “If I just make the colour hierarchy the structure of the picture, can that work, and still do realistic subject matter, still do the real world?” He wondered how to structure a colour picture, and used colours to give his photographs whole new, perhaps psychological meaning.

8.What is William Eggleston about?

He was a man of few words calling his pictures “democratic” also saying he is “at war with the obvious”. He took colour photographs in 1970s of his home city Memphis and the surrounding area.

Genius of Photography 3 - Right Time Right Place

1.What is described as “One of the most familiar concepts in photography”?

Capture of a moment, started from Henri Cartier-Bresson, in 1933. Known as “a decisive moment”.

2.Should you trust a photograph?

According to Danto: “Trusting a photograph was probably a huge mistake from the beginning”. In my opinion it depends on the actual use of the photograph. For example: I don't think we should trust commercial work, as most of it is enhanced digitally now days, however for personal use, in order to keep memories, yes we should trust it fully. 

3.What was revolutionary about the Leica in 1925?

Leica in 1925 was a compact, quiet with the latest lens technology camera, which allowed to easier capture of a moment without the use of tripod. It apparently started a whole new style of photography. There weren’t many of those cameras on the market. The viewfinder was placed in an unusual position in the left top corner of a camera, which allows left eye to be open and “watch the world”, while normal cameras, which go in the front of the face, block off the vision of that left eye.

4.What did George Bernard Shaw say about all the paintings of Christ?

“I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.”

5.Why were Tony Vaccaros’ negatives destroyed by the army censors?

They contained images of dead GI’s, which according to the army censors were moments, which the world wasn’t yet ready to accept.

6.Who was Henryk Ross and what was his job?

Henryk Ross was a ghetto official photographer in Lodz, Poland. He was employed by Department of Administration and Statistics. He produced identity card pictures. His job was to also document the production of goods by the inhabitants of Lodz’s ghetto, and working with graphics department he had the responsibility for promoting those goods.

7.Which show was a “sticking plaster for the wounds of the war”, how many people saw it and what “cliché” did it end on?

“The Family Of Man” - an exhibition, which opened in New York in 1955. It was staged as a walk-through version of a “Life” magazine. It was a most popular photographic show of all time attracting over 9 million viewers. According to David Campany in many ways it was a last statement about photography. It concludes with an optimistic “cliché”” W. Eugene Smith’s photograph of his children walking in his garden out into the light.

 8.Why did Joel Meyerowitz photograph ground zero in colour?

Because he didn’t want to photograph it in black and white, which in his opinion would mean to keep it as the tragedy, and there was a tragic element to photography the collapse already.

Genius of Photography 2 - Documents for Artists

1. What was “The Face of the Times”?

It was a human typology created by August Sander (Germany 1920’s). He used system of categorization based on 7 social types. His photographs had meaning hidden behind them, showing things which can’t be spoken of, like the chaos in Germany in 1920’s.

2. Which magazine did Rodchenko design?

USSR In Construction

3. What is photo-montage?

A graphic technique which was inspired on cinema montage.

4. Why did Eugene Atget use albumen prints in the 1920’s?

You could print them in the sunshine instead of darkroom. He admitted he didn’t know how to use contemporary materials in order to make his prints last better.

5. What is solarisation and how was it discovered?

Discovered by Man Ray in 1920s, makes people look like their faces are made from aluminium.

6. What was the relationship between Bernice Abbott and Eugene Atget?

They were both a documentary photographers.

7. Why was Walker Evans fired from the FSA?

Evans  couldn’t make his vision conform to the propaganda requirements of the FSA, so therefore he got fired in 1937.

Genius of photography 1 - Fixing the shadows

1. What is photography’s “true genius”?

Photography raised different emotions throughout the whole 170 years of its being. It showed us strangeness and intrigued the way we viewed conventional situations or locations. Photography always describes something and the whole art of it is to control the transformation of that description.

2.     Name a proto – photographer?

William Henry Fox- Talbot

3.     In 19^th century, what term was associated with Daguerreotype?

Daguerreotypes were fixed images on a mirrored metal plate. Created as one of image, similar to Polaroid, this produced a visual experience that is unique. I

n 19^th century Daguerreotypes were referred to as “Mirror with a memory”.

4.     What is vernacular?

Vernacular photography, back in 19^th century was what we would contemporarily call an amateur photography. It included journalism, forensic, passport, tourists, photo cards etc., technically all uses of photography were included in vernacular category apart from art. Vernacular photography started when first KODAK cameras were more available to public mass. 

5.     How do you “fix the shadows”?

Fixing a shadows was Talbot’s invention of the negative-positive process of photography. 1835 Talbot brought together the camera obscura fitted with a convex lens and silver chloride. He was the first to invent a photo negative and also to print it on the paper.

6.     What is the “Carte De Visite”?

It was a type of a small, visiting card sized photograph, which became hugely popular. They were shipped all over the world, from Europe to America. People liked them, as they were created by a camera with 8 lenses, so it allowed to have 8 different poses in short period of time. Carte De Visite was what took photography to “manufacturing/marketing” level.

7.     Who was Nadar and why was he so successful?

Gaspard Felix Tournachon also known as Nadar, which was his photographic name/nickname. It allowed him to be marketed easier. He became really popular and successful following photographs representing people looking naturally.  Getting natural expression from the object was really hard in 19^th century and Nadar mastered the art of doing so.  He also represented artists as equal and authentic. By his studio shots we could judge that he tried to isolate his subject, which made the audience look at the force of personality rather than using props to express someone’s profession and identity.

8.     What is pictorialism ?

Photography at it’s most po-faced; moody, mean and occasionally magnificent photographs. Photographers practicing pictorialism tried to make it look like fine art, imitating print making or drawing. During the same time vernacular was around which made pictorialism become an “artistic dead end”.