WEEK 8 – ASSIGNMENT 3 – STRANGERS AND STORIES

PHOTO ESSAY OF MIGUEL MIERELLES

 

Assigned to Taylor, we workshopped who would be best to interview and shoot for our photo essay. For Taylor, I suggested a friend of mine Adam Hoss Ayers who is a glass and steel sculptor and who I used last time for my Media 1 project profile and excellent for the visual aspect of this media.

Taylor suggested I photograph a family friend of his, Miguel Meirelles, at his antique/restoration shop in Malvern. I had an idea that I’d photograph Miguel in his workshop clothes, wood shavings curling around his feet as he worked on his latest creation. I thought I’d shoot him in black and white as to me this always looks more interesting and use a fish-eye lens for close ups. I wanted to capture the action of what he was doing and an essence of his character.

However, on the day that we had planned to shoot, Taylor hadn’t turned up to class, and so I didn’t borrow a fish eye lens thinking he wasn’t going to show (he did in the end).

At the antique shop, the first thing I saw was Miguel in his kitchen with his workers having coffee and a bit of lunch. It seemed this is where the energy, the centre of Miguel’s actions came from and I was intrigued to take a shot of this. Taylor, having more experience with DSLR cameras, helped me get the settings right, and we aimed for a dark, almost film-noir look.

I got some close ups of some of the antiques on sale and made sure I got some of the French signage as Miguel often travels to France to obtain new pieces for his showroom. Thankfully, Miguel quite accommodating and quite easy to talk to, regaling us with stories of his escape from Mozambique in the 1960s, his time in Europe and finding his love for restoring antique furniture.

 

At some point, a middle-aged couple from Adelaide came in and started talking about new pieces they wanted. Miguel was, of course, relaxed and friendly with them and I sensed they trusted his judgment. I asked him how he coped with the competition on the street (there are at least five other antique shops in the vicinity) and he said that there is no competition if you have the right product.

While Miguel was a natural bon vivant, I also could tell he had a hard- nosed business sense and this seemed etched into his face. I think I saw this as he was walking back into the workshop while the Adelaide couple were in the showroom.

 

The last shot of him selling the table seems so natural that I could tell he just loved what he did.

 

In Lightroom I didn’t do that much to the photos other than adding the vignette feature, darkening  or cropping where I felt it was necessary to emphasise an aspect or lead the viewer to the suggested subject. eg. The first shot of the chair in the kitchen.

What I liked about this project was working with Taylor as he’s quite affable and helpful and meeting Miguel who imbued a passion for life.  It was also interesting that Miguel and I had some things in common like he knew a friend of mine Nicholas Dattner who had a furniture shop a while back in Collingwood, as well as sharing stories of our travels to Africa. There was, in the end, a great swapping of stories.

WEEK 7 – Edge of Photography Prac and NGV excursion

EDGE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

This was a challenging prac . Going out and focusing on the edge of frame which seems counter intuitive to photography. While it was easy to photograph the mundane and difficult because of the rain (and the shortness of time due to other commitments), in the end what was the hardest thing was how to make the composition interesting.

I experimented with a high number F-Stop (around 22) so that the background and foreground would have a chance of being in focus. Because of the rain I was limited to taking shelter on the stage at Federation Square and opted for a bigger lens. Bigger lens meant more fuzzy shots so I had to discard a third of my shots. I was trying to aim for some kind of action, or moment from unwary participants including seagulls who were as easy to shoot as herding cats.

In post,  I was able to cheat a bit. Like this one below. I was hoping to connect the image of the man on the far left with the refugee poster. I dampened down the clarity to highlight the man and the light to draw the eye to the poster. Not sure if it works as the colour of bins distract.

One image I am happy is this one here which is the roof of Flinders Street Station:

By cropping,  upping the sharpness and using vignette  I was able to get some interesting textures out of the roof, the luminescent green glistening like the underside of a blue whale. Well, a green whale in this case.

When the subject, in this case, a seagull, wasn’t doing much except being a seagull,  I upped the tint and saturation which I think adds a nice texture here to the normally dull terracotta.

I like this next one just for the starkness, the almost absurdity of the lady with the umbrella standing in the background like some kind of rare toadstool.

What I learnt from this exercise was that objects on the edge of the frame become the subject even if they are not properly centred. These objects then become associated with other objects and a  kind of story or containment develops.  It reminded me of Danny Singer work:

Excursion to National Gallery of Victoria

The Bill Henson exhibition was challenging for some students due to the subject matter, one remarking that they thought it was voyeuristic and inappropriate. But I did not see this but rather the captured fleeting moments of youth and sensuality.

I love this infrared stock that the Richard Mosse used here for his shots of the Congo. Knowing the genocide that has occurred here adds a poignant and disturbing beauty to his compositions.

WEEK 6 – Sebastiao Salgado doco, discussion in pairs of photo essay

Sebastiao Salgado

Today we watched the Wim Wender’s documentary about Brazilian/Magnum photographer Sebastiao Salgado, The Salt of the Earth (2014).

The documentary resonated with me because I have to travelled to some of the places he’d photographed such as the Congo, though I’d been there before the Hutus arrived enmasse in 1994 (I was there in 1990). Kasingani, Goma…towns that I had stayed in that would later be places of slaughter.

‘Each man had gold in their souls’

While Salgado captures extraordinary shots such as Brazilian gold mine workers, the famines that gripped Ethiopia, the atrocities of the Yugoslavian war or the horrors of the Rwandan slaughter, he is also able to capture the humanity, a topic that became more of a travail of his soul.

Some are reminiscent of Steve McCurry’s work but I would hazard that Salgado got there first.

It was interesting how it was his wife that was the one that was the catalyst for his career after coming home one day with a camera for her studies. Even more surprising that she stuck with him through the years where he disappeared for years at a time.

Damaged by the horror he’d witnessed, he went back to Brazil and on his father’s farm he and wife planted millions of trees, thus recovering the depleted ecosystem. This adventure led him to focus on a new subject Genesis where he focused on the environment.

I really got a lot of this documentary. It really covered not only his life of a social photographer but his own spirit. It gave me a sense of hope about reversing the damage done to the planet.

Brian’s notes:

After you’ve seen the film read this short extract from Susan Sontag’s landmark book, On Photography.

If the film and Salgado intrigues you, it is worth watching an earlier documentary,  Spectre of Hope (here on youtube) where he talks with John Berger about his photographs (particularly the work on globalisation and migration). Berger puts forward an interesting and perhaps optimistic viewpoint about why such photos of suffering are important and necessary and how they work.

Photo essay

Having been allocated to work with Taylor, we both set out appropriate subjects for each other. Taylor has a friend whose father runs an antique shop. He restores furniture so I hope to get some interesting shots of him planing a chair, his shoes covered in splots of varnish while he shuffles around the curls of shaved timber legs.

Taylor also has a DJ as an alternative but he was not sure how well that would work out as it wouldn’t be as visually interesting.

For Taylor, I suggested an artist, Hoss Ayes who makes glass and steel sculptures. This would be very visually interesting as he has a big workshop. My second choice was a Nepalese friend who works as a carer but we worried about the issues surrounding consent.

Photo Essay Prac – 7 Images

We looked at various photo essays in class such as ‘How other half live by Jacob Riis (1890), ‘Country Doctor in Life’ Eugene W. Smith and 100photos.time.com.

We looked at how they captured the human condition, that the aim should be to leave the viewer with a particular emotion. Also to consider was narrative structure – beginning, obstacles, conflict, protagonists interacting and resolution.

Other photographers worth investigating are Cindy Sherman, Tracey Moffat, Gregory Crewdson (interwebs), Melanie Pullen. Furthermore, there is a great book to check out: Storytelling with Photographs: How to create a photo essay (book)

With that in mind our group went out and photographed The Exchange. Ours was about friends that bump into each other. One of them has a fatal communicable disease which she passes on to her friend and they both very quickly die within 7 frames. Fun!