Contemporary Photography Essay

As mentioned previously I explored the topic of Contemporary Photographic Practise in my final year of uni and wanted to share my outlook and thoughts on this subject as well as showcasing some of the theory and technicalities that go behind creating this thought process. Below is my final piece titled 'Entity' along with its written submission. I was so shocked when finding out I got a first for this piece as I was not expecting it and had never fully written an analysis that explored several theorists within the field of photography before.

Contemporary photographic practise looks at modern day society and how images are constructed and documented in terms of the wider context looking at social and cultural factors. It explores the functionality and continuum of time and relevance looking at how it is situated in the wider context. These days contemporary practice can be captured by various mediums such as smart phones and visible through the use of modern technology such as social media sites and Apps. This style of practise heavily relies on documenting the social aspects of life and sharing them with communities on a larger scale in order to reach a wider audience. This can be argued as a form of art as it takes the everyday scenario or item, and places it in a composition that questions its existence and meaning in the world. This expressive form can be presented in all forms of medium in order to demonstrate and illustrate the theme of contemporary art and photography. In order for contemporary art and photography to question its position in society, there has to be evidence of photographic veracity in order to give the piece a sense of realism and construct a diverse view of opinions amongst the audience and onlookers. This often looks at the way the subject is placed within the frame and what meaning it serves as the object in the field.

Entity Entity is a collection of photographic images based around the concept of found objects. Found object photography consists of the collection of items located in a particular place or concept themed. Tate Modern refers to found objects as a “natural or man-made object, or fragment of an object, that is found (or sometimes bought) by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it’ (Tate, 2016). The significance of this genre of photography is that the items collected are taken from the environment they were found in, and therefore create a new form of interpretation when taken out of ‘reality’. The images as a collection reflects the range of the items that were found whilst still maintaining a theme of their origin. Individually the focus on a particular image has to be constructed and analysed which makes the audience deconstruct the image in order to draw their own conclusion as to what the object is and its story, but also where the items were found as a whole.

“The term "found object" is a literal translation from the French objet trouvé, meaning objects or products with non-art functions that are placed into an art context and made part of an artwork; what we now call "the readymade" is an updated version of that idea.

Marcel Duchamp is usually credited as inventing the readymade, but the essential idea of taking something preexisting and elevating it into art did exist before he created his first one.

Duchamp's Fountain of 1917 is the artist's—and perhaps the world's—most famous readymade sculpture. Duchamp submitted the work, simply consisting of a porcelain urinal that's been placed on its back on a pedestal and signed "R. Mutt" by the artist, for an show at the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. It was rejected by the exhibition committee, but is now considered a foundational work for much of the artistic experimentation over the past century.” (Artspace, 2016)

Entity explores this path of discovering new objects and presenting them as an art form with a hidden existing history blurring the lines between the literal meaning of the object and the path to how it got there to be discovered. This is down to being presented not just as a visual print but as a moving image too.

The main composition of the physical piece was influenced by a photographer named Roddy Williams who used this theme of found objects to explore the nature of existence and the journey it takes individuals on. He presented his group of images in a collage form whilst using minimalist colours in order to not just draw the attention to just the object, but to present it in a stylised form as well. Another aspect looks at the objects as a form of discovery and documentation of reality. This is similar to John Tagg, a professor of art, who looks at the way items are documented as a form of truth and realism. “Tagg's critique of how photography is used by the state hinges not around the “power of the camera” in its capacity as a technology used for surveillance but “the power of the apparatuses of the local state which deploy it and guarantee the authority of the images it constructs to stand as evidence or register as truth.”

This categorisation of society being classed as a form of surveillance, appeals to the documentative and discovery side of the individual as it is up to them to gather their own assumptions and interpretations of what the image means to them and the purpose it holds in society and the individual connected with it.

Within Entity, each object found is photographically taken on a piece of patterned cloth with the object being centred in the middle of the square frame. The use of lighting is quite minimalist as it uses a combination of natural light and flash in order to make the central object stand out, whilst darkening the outer edges of each photo. After the images were taken the use of post-production was vital in order to present the group of images as a uniform. This stylistic aspect used in order to emphasise the object in each square photo and to highlight only the object as the main point of focus. The arrangement of the images in a 5x5 grid was carefully constructed so that each item didn't necessarily correlate to the next item but sat in the wider context of these found objects; in this scenario a particular location. The use of a square format also frames all the individual images together well as if it was taken as a polaroid from a crime scene identifying images that were found at the scene referring to the documentation of society Tagg suggests. Another influence that can be expressed is the view of Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher who combined a western marxist view with a historical materialistic view. His belief was that found objects were “full of that promise of meaning peculiar to the ephemeral, discredited, and neglected.” (Benjamin, 1993). He also referred to that “surrealists themselves tended a cult of found objects, artefacts that deposited by the recent past yet already so obsolete that they seemed like relic from an extinct, prehistoric age.” (Benjamin, 1993). This strongly relates to the theme of found objects in a contemporary form as it tries to present these objects as an artefact with a meaningful past attached to it.

The piece is also presented in a digital format as contemporary photography and art uses an array of different mediums in this modern age to display the work. Nowadays new technology, such as smartphones and portable cameras, allow people to capture, create, and share an image in order to display their work or a moment they’ve witnessed with others. By doing so the use of a slide-show type format is used in order to display this array of found objects in a non linear way. The use of an unidentifiable moving image juxtaposes with the real found objects to create a blurred perception of where the objects were found. The use of sound in this piece uses diegetic sound from the location at which the objects were found and reveals hints along the way such as a tannoy voice saying “personal belongings’ in order to lead the audience to a clearer idea of where these objects were found. The reoccurring sample also adds emphasis on what these items may be and as to remind the audience that all these objects were all ‘belongings’ to start with. It also allows a clearer image to form as to how these items departed with other individuals in the world and how they interacted with them.

Items within the piece include objects such as a syringe, broken glass, cigarette lighters, and pieces of metal which gives the connotation of being ‘edgy’ and ‘dark’ in terms of an inner theme. Overall, with the use of monochrome and minimalistic colours, it drawers attention to this theme and also adds to the question about the path and how the objects ended up there. This darker inner theme reflects the notions of John Tagg and his view on surveillance as well as Walter Benjamin's take of viewing objects as if it was a relic of a historic past time. By combining these influential styles, it is clear that most of the objects are bold and stand out and the understanding of why they were chosen is clear as they suggest there is a more darker meaning to how the objects ended up where they were found and the path of discovery of how they got there.

References

Tate, (2016), Found Object, [Online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/found-object [Accessed 19/01/16]

ArtSpace, (2016), The History of the Found Object, [Online] Available at: http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/art_market/the-history-of-the-found-object-in-art-52224 [Accessed 20/01/16]

Tagg, J., (2006), The Power of Representation, [Online] Available at: http://particulations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/power-of-representation.html [Accessed 20/01/16]

Tagg, J., (1988), The Burden of Representation (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

McCole, J., (1993), Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition, New York, Cornell University Press

#ContemporaryPhotographyEssay