ARTIST STATEMENT

Bristol.

Martha Cooper

Inspiration.

Martha Cooper, a photographer who documented the New York graffiti scene of the 1970's & 80', she photographed the tagging scene back when there were just a handfull of people out there doing it. This was the absolute beginning of what you call street art today & martha recorded it tirelessly. She would sit for hours waiting for one train to pass after getting a call from a writer letting her know it was coming. There would be only one shot for a photo since it was most likely to be buffed out the following day. Martha did this out of curiousness, pure interest and love. She thought this was a movement of the minute. She had no idea that her lens was capturing the very beginning of one the greatest art movements of our time. The writers, the subway, the underground gatherings for writers, & the local urban culture

which was so large in New York, during the birth of Graffiti, Rap & the Community of kids, teens & art which brought them together. Martha Cooper was warmly welcomed into the underground world of

New York where she documented what many people seemed to miss. She documented what wasn't yet known to the world. Through her photographs, over the years she has been my main inspiration.

dreaming.

kings way cover.

searching for an inspiration. Martha Cooper, Ari Marcopoulos.

photocopied photographs. ari marcopoulos. "Poison" Series.

Ari Marcopoulos.

martha cooper.

these photographs make me feel fuzzy.

kind of like love.

black is a colour.

what am i doing. i've found myself writing & dreaming more than shooting.
i've got some stuff tucked under my sleeve.. i think it's time to take off my jumper perhaps..
unravel that sh!t.
black & white. grain. paris. london. homeboy. 1600. personal. real personal. body. ari marcopoulous. little paris book. photocopied photographs. i've been doing that for a while.. might as well put it to use with this old thing.
i go for months draining myself, my mind, & then i wake up.. on this big road, the gravel grazing my knees as i get up & see everything i need to. i take my jumper off.. & here it all is.

nudes

i've began reading the dictionary of symbols. and what certain symbols i can include in my nudes, to say a whole lot more than they do just as they are. certain colours, could be applied with filters, can create a certain emotion within the image, and tell a story. for example as i've read, the colour red is fire, represents life, as red is the womb. or certain objects can be added to the photograph, beside me.

i've also found some more inspiriational nudes, by Man Ray. Black & white, abstract, surreal like.

Also found a couple nudes by Nan Goldin, but her portrayal of nudes, or images in general were in regards to the life that was present, her's and her friends, aquaintences etc.

My aim for my images is portrayal of feelings, emotions and experiences. All I need to do is learn how to portray these life like elements in my images, by body language, posture, tone, etc.

Lighting is key. Deep, dark, sharp lighting. I'd love to experiment with being nude in public, such as in front of buildings, parks etc. That would take a bit of guts, and not sure if it's legal.

For example, the dictionary of symbols said that a bed, is associated with life and death.

and life is typically created on a bed, and often, people die in their beds. I'd like to set up a shoot of myself, on a bed, nude, relating to life and death, and how inside, where you grow and grow, you experience and deal with so many emotions, given by life, feeling like death. i need to research this thouroughly, to back up my intention and the outcome. Man Ray's nude's are a great inspiration so far. Nan Goldin also by far. Looking at her photographs with nude people, give you a feeling of a disturbed life, experience, traumatic stress, physical and emotional. i should photograph myself nude, on those days which are so dark, and deep below the surface, where you can actually see the physically effects on my body, at that point in time, keeping in mind the lighting, and what i'm truly trying to portray. my goal will be to work with digital, as i'm not as familiar with digital as i am with film. this will start soon.

pictured: black & white, Man Ray. Colour: Nan Goldin

back for the first time.

it's been a while. as a photography student, i am ashamed to say that.

my body is here, but my mind is somewhere else. i feel it's all truly over, all aspects of my life.

the stale smell of cigarettes stain my morning robe, my head aches from thoughts of my past.

its almost june, and i am still stuck in square one, stuck in may 2008. 2009 is non existent.

i've failed, disappointed myself, negelected my cameras. they are taped up in a box.

they shouldn't be there, but they are, and the only words i've managed to speak are, i'm aware, but i'm gone. it's kind of like hell inside my body, and on the outside is soft skin, worn eyes and fingernails bitten to a pulp. i'm nude, honest and immensely confused. the sunshine strikes through my window, it blinds me. i wish it was dark, like the darkest night ever.

i can't continue to breathe like this. so last night, with my own hands, i picked up my weak body, set up some lights, a camera, and began to shoot. i felt effortless, the photographs look tired, my body looks tired. i am tired, but i was able to lift myself up. the images don't make sense to me, the focus is my breasts, my skin, the lighting covering only certain parts of my body. a cover is always good, but it's not always honest. but this is as honest as i could be at this point in time. now what? i have no idea.

digital, self portrait; is est.

i do and don't exist.
i will walk a path, and then i shall not.
i will breath, walk, and feed my hungry body.
i will run far, then not run at all.

and then i shall not, as everything continues as it is, and grows into other things,
where i ran, the air i breathed, the thoughts i stroked, the love i shared, will not exist.
my body is a shell, a shell nobody can step on, break, or throw far to the sea, that is only after i have conquered all my desires, questions, cities, and love, my body will be free, for anything on earth to rush away. everything in life flows, and nothing will ever remain the same.
therefore, i do and don't exist. my body is my wish, to explore, discover and document what you may or may not see beneath everything the covers it, it sometimes suffocates. i then take my camera, remove my blouse, and let the shutter see what is beneath, something we all question.
this is raw.

My self portrait was mainly influenced by photographer Darren James. His photographs of nude women are dark, soft, noisy, out of focus, and his use of artificial light creates a dreamlike sensation.
I have always had a fascination and interest in photographs portraying nude women. I decided I could be that woman in the photograph. Conveying my body as it is, beneath all the clothing, and things we wear from day to day. My body is just a shell, and beneath it, my bones, heart, veins and emotions.
Documenting myself was challenging as well as satisfying. I discovered myself in a different way. A form of my body which I rarely see. Possibly a further exploration later in the year.
Maybe nobody can photograph me the way I have photographed myself.
Over the past years, my body has changed, developed, re developed. I feel great with my body. There are no hidden eating disorders or scars.
This photoshoot made clear to me, I am capable of anything, and so is my body.

I didn't plan my shoot, yet only afterwards I realised that this was how I visioned the photographs to be. I used florescent light which sat upon the bed. I had the light half covered wit a towel so create only certain shadows upon the wall and my body.

I had the camera set to f. 3.5 and a slow shutter speed of around 3"- 5" The auto focus wasn't working so I had to focus the lens manually which become a little difficult, and in result the photographs were fuzzy and out of focus. This now works with the form of the photograph.
I plan to further explore this area of photography moreso with myself, experimenting with different lighting, locations, back drops etc.
Only one image of mine appears here. I prefer the rest to be shown in class.

Images above : Darren James.

Darren James’ current work focuses on liminal or threshold states. This series of images evokes a dreamlike mood, as if its subjects were imagined or partially-remembered. The collection includes both figures and landscapes. James’ dark imagery, using low exposures and unorthodox locations, gives his works an ethereal or intangible quality. The work invites the viewer to engage with it as if the images were from the viewer’s own dreams or memories.

colour theory, light.

Light is a part of the electromagnetic field, which ranges from radio waves to gamma rays.
Electromagnetic radiation wavevs are fluctuations of electric and magnetic fields, which transport energy from one place to another.
Einstein's theory; light could exist in discrete particle-like quantities, which later came to be known as photons. Light can be considered to be particles called photons ,which are massless particles each traveling with wavelike properties at the speed of light. They carry energy and momentum although they have no mass.

Electromagnestim works on the principle that an electric current through a wire generates a magnetic field.

Mathematical Physics, observed by Faraday, later by Maxwell and partially by heaviside and hertz, which took to understanding the nature of light. What is thought of light, is actually a generating wave disturbance in the electromagnetic field.

The part of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to the human eye, extending from extreme red, 760.6 nanometers, to extreme violet, 393.4 nanometers.

Euclid's method consisted of assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms, and then proving othe propositions from those axioms. Earlier, many other mathematicians stated these facts, however, Euclid was the first to show how these propositions could fit together into a comprehensive deductive and logical system. The Elements began with plane geometry. Then it went on to to solid geometry and three dimensions. Euclidean geometry desribes physical space.

Empedocles' philosophy was that the four elements are irreducible components of the world, joined and seperated from each other by completing principles.
Greek presocratic philosopher who supposed that the four elements are irreducible components of the world, joined to and separated from each other by competing principles. Love invariably strives to combine everything into a harmonious sphere, which Strife tries to shatter into distinct entities. Human beings corrupted by eating animal flesh, Empedocles, supposed, pursue philosophy in an effort to contribute positively to the cosmic cycle.

Ibn-al Hasan is regarded to be the "father of modern optics."He wrote a book called Optics which proved the intromission theory of vision and turned it into its modern form.
He was recognized for his experimetns on optics including lenses, mirrors, refraction, reflection and the dispersion of light

Intromission theory-
The first was the "emission theory" which maintained that vision occurs when rays emanate from the eyes and are intercepted by visual objects. If we saw an object directly it was by 'means of rays' coming out of the eyes and again falling on the object. A refracted image was, however, seen by 'means of rays' as well, which came out of the eyes, traversed through the air, and after refraction, fell on the visible object which was sighted as the result of the movement of the rays from the eye. This theory was championed by scholars like Euclid and Ptolemy and their followers.

From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light.[16]
He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour.