Writing my disstertation and the specific study on Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin has helped me in the process of my work. With Bourgeois she returns to her past to specific moments or memories for inspiration and influence to what she is creating. For me I use a felling of a memory, nostalgia, fear of forgetting and a general wish to return. Tracey Emin released a book ‘My Photo Album’ in 2013 which is a journey through her life using pictures from her personal collection, full of personal experiences and events of her life. Personal experience has always been the heart of Emin’s work and this visual catalogue is an amazing piece of artwork in its own right. The fact that it resembles an old photo album helps me understsand my own work or more to the point the way it is portrayed and how the viewer sees it. I have somewhat of a tricky time seeing my work as anything much as i know the viewer will not know my memories or my feelings or see what i see in it. Looking at Emin’s Photo Album I can not only wonder on her part, but also see my own family in her pictures and my own memories. It is a marvel
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I have recently been rooting through all the draws in my house and i have been able to collect a number of passport like photos. I have to add to my collection one of my mother from the 70’s the only old on i can aquire of my fathers is on his actual passport from the 70’s. Also i have my own from the ages 7, 14 and 21. My sister from about 9, 18 and 21, my brothers from around 9, 18 and 21. I have been playing around with them, ive been putting them into an repetitive series. seeing how things work. i feel as though this piece works well. the act of repeating an image changes the image itself. It perhaps can make it more powerful or less meaningful.
I came across this picture in an old history book of mine, given to me by my mother. Ever since I saw this image of Lewis Powell I have never forgotten it and it has always stuck with me. Lewis Powell was a Confederate States Army soldier who attempted to assastionate the US Secretary of State, and was one of the four hanged for the Lincoln Assasination conspiracy. This image if anything is haunting, it is as if it has lodeged itself in my mind. I was immediatley captivated, there is a distant subjectivity becomes it. He seems unsure and wrestling with the cameras gaze.
There are many ways to look at a photo, espeically portraits, like passport photos, so clear and raw. Roland Barthes’ the author of Camera Lucinda was taken by the way that this photo suggests, ‘That has been’ and ‘This will die’. it is realted to three realities, Powell was, he is no more and he is going to die. This brings me to the way I see things. what is interests me is the present and futuristic way to look at a picture. the present in which you look at a recent image, perhaps you dont like the way you look at it etc. and the in the futre looking back at your youth, or even a stranger gazing upon it in wonder of what was.
Going back to Powell, Alexander Gardner the person who captured this unique image must have realised he had something special as he did not bother to capture as much with the other conspiritors. Hisotian James Swanson Explains ‘[Gardner’s] images of the other conspirators are routine portraits bound by the conventions of 19th century photography. In his images of Powell, however, Gardner achieved something more. In one startling and powerful view, Powell leans back against a gun turret, relaxes his body, and gazes languidly at the viewer. There is a directness and modernity in Gardner’s Powell suite unseen in the other photographs.’
It is as if the camera does not let us forget oursleves and the love or pain there is something unique in each picture, an affirmity of life something that booth photos are drenched in.
what i like about the passport photos apart from the way they are taken, is the idea of them as well as the quality. the idea that they are taken for people to go away, most usually and conventionally to have a good time. Also the simplicity of it, that soley this is a picture of someone, people tend to keep the spare ones as momentoms in their purse, as they are a loved one. These pictures to me seem to last forever. The quality of the pictures are great, the ones of my borther and sister were taken in the early 1990’s, they look dated as does the clothes and haircuts its quite priceless, whereas mine taken in the late 1990’s seems to be more fresh and white. the compostition of these pictures with your head and the top of the shoulders in the picture and then a gap of white, empitness and your head is something that is quite interesting in itself.
Today, i began rooting thorugh my parents boxes of old photos, and i came across an old passport picture of myself from when i was six. I remember having it taken i was in woolworths with my family and had to sit in the photobooth,obviously on my own which i wasnt too pleased about. I waited patiently for the big flash to happen, alas it did to my terror. I also found my brother’s and sister’s passport pictures from when they were around the same age. What i find interesting about these pictures is the way they are taken and the way they come out for example, my sisters picture came out similar to mine she looked quite shocked. my brothers on the other hand is different, he is making cheeky childlike faces and smiling.
