Evaluation
Initially for this PESP module, I had four different ideas, hair, a sense of place, abandonment and textures. Three of these ideas lead off of previous projects I had created before, sense of place from my last project, following the Severn Beach railway line. Abandonment from a series of landscape images I created on an abandoned building and textures from a project photographed on black and white 35mm film looking at textures and marks within car-parks in Bristol. Because I had already created work around these three projects, I felt I should explore a different idea for this project, especially as this project is a preparatory project in which experimentation is vital in developing ideas. I therefore decided to go with the subject of hair.
I was initially intrigued by the subject of hair due to personal experiences of hair loss, where I lost my hair at age 12. I began researching into hair and its materiality, as when I lost my hair I felt as though it was such a big deal, and that hair itself was so important to have as it shaped how I looked and who I was. I wanted to get a grasp on whether other people felt this strongly towards hair too, or whether it was interesting to me because of personal experience. I always believe that projects, where personal experience is involved, are always more successful because the artist is able to put passion and excitement into the work, and they will always be motivated to do the work because it relates to their personality.
After deciding on an initial subject, I began shooting around different subjects to do with hair. I shot hair and colour, in relation to Hanne van der Woude’s projects on redheads, and how their hair colour is dying out. As my family are all redheaded this was the perfect opportunity to photograph hair colour. I explored this idea but didn’t feel like it was really very strong. I feel as though the subject of redheads becoming ‘extinct’ has been photographed so many times and it wasn’t for me.
I explored the area of hair and texture, bringing two of my initial ideas together. This was really interesting as I placed the texture of hair alongside other natural textures such as wood and grass, to contrast naturally grown things. However, this didn’t visually take, and instead I photographed close-up images of people’s hair, realizing that I could capture the texture of hair itself through macro images. This I felt I wanted to work on further.
My final initial shooting area was the idea of ‘how people wear their hair’, with the idea that people wear their hair as an accessory, as they would clothes and make up, to create different looks, and in turn create an identity/persona/personality for themselves. After shooting this idea, I realised I wanted to continue it through the rest of the project, as the idea of body construction to create an identity really intrigued me. I also wanted to incorporate the texture of hair within this project.
After initial tutorials, I realised that the subject of this project was definitely hair and its materiality. However, I want to look at it broadly rather than choosing one of the subjects I’ve been focusing on so far, as I feel there is so much to do with hair and surrounding the area of hair that can be visually captured. Eleanor Farmer has been my main inspiration for this broadness, as she created a project, a study of blood, in which she created photographic images relating to everything blood. From her work, I decided to create a study of hair, an index of hair, focusing on everything hair. This meant portraits, still lifes, collecting hair, landscapes that imitate hair textures, hairdressers and a broad variety of images of hair construction tools.
As I had decided on a conceptual focus for my project, I experimented with shooting, taking portraits in the studio, in natural light and using both Mamiya Leaf and Hasselblad cameras. This experimentation period lasted for about half of the project, as obviously it’s been a short project, but also because I wanted to create a good selection of images so that I could choose which process was the most successful. After this experimentation, I was given feedback in which it was suggested to stay in the studio as being able to manipulate light to focus and illuminate hair was vital, but to try and use lighter more neutral backgrounds so the hair pops out from it. The Mamiya Leaf images were more successful, using a portrait lens when taking people’s photographs and the macro lens when photographing the collected hair. After this decision I continued shooting people, experimenting with different backgrounds and lighting and finally decided on lighting both the background and the subject from the front, with a neutral grey background so that the portraits pop out. This was inspired by Trine Sondergaard and her portraits, which use natural light but pointing on the subjects face, creating quite a painterly effect within the image. In terms of the still life images, there was a similar process where I researched Amber Morghan’s work, inspired by her bright colours and composition, I tried experimenting with pink backgrounds and green hair. These were less successful than the portraits as I didn’t spend as much time on these as the portraits, but they still show the hair off. The idea was to photograph them using advertising lighting, as I wanted to show the hair that I had collected as beautiful. Advertising usually promotes head hair rather than hair that’s now off the body, most people find it gross to touch hair once it comes off the head, and so these images were supposed to play with this idea, trying to sell this hair and make it beautiful, even though its off the head.
Initially, I wanted to make a book out of the images I had taken throughout this project, however after edit tutorial feedback, I realised that I shouldn’t make a book for my submission as the project definitely didn’t look finished and wouldn’t all sit together in a final book. Some images, such as the portrait ones have been very successful, but others, such as the hairdresser ones not so much, and so they could bring the whole body of work down visually and that wouldn’t be good. Submission-wise the decision was to print the most successful portrait and still life images to show the array of work I have created and also the experimentation process and different lighting styles. Printing them large allows me to see what has been successful and what hasn’t, and helps me get to the next step in deciding the final lighting styles.
In terms of contextual research, I luckily chose a similar subject for my IRP module and so have been reading around the subject of hair and identity throughout the past months. Main contextual research has come from media writing, such as The Media and Body Image and Media Culture, which both specifically write about body image in relation to the media, how the body is always being constructed and how we portray our own identity through this construction. These readings have really informed my understanding of why we want to change our appearances in order to look a certain way, as we are so influenced by the media and fashion trends, that we will construct our looks, and in turn our hair, according to the latest trends. Not only has these readings influenced my thought process but they’ve also influenced the next step in the project, as I feel I should ask people about why they do what they do with their hair, why they construct themselves in order to seem a certain way.
As a final piece, I am really pleased with the images I printed. The process of printing the images took a decent amount of time, mainly to make sure all the colours were printed correctly, along with actual technical printer issues, in which lines were printed all over my images. However, after sorting these out and correctly printing, the images came out really well. The colours were all balanced properly, meaning the face tones were neutral and not oddly toned. In terms of the prints seen altogether, they look slightly different in lighting and composition. This was because the images have come from different shoots in which different lighting styles and lenses were used. This meant that some photographs have quite strong contrasting lighting on the models faces, with a lighter background colour on the left than the right, creating shadow on the face. Whereas other portraits were taken with quite rounded lighting, and so the images are more flat and light evenly throughout with barely any visible shadows. I feel as though this may matter if it was an actual final submission piece for the end of a project, but the fact that I am continuing this project onto the next module allows me to submit work that’s still in progress and that looks different because its all still in its experimental stages. So placing these images next to one another, a slight different will be seen, but that is on purpose. That will allow me to see which lighting style has been the most successful.
Obviously I wanted to create a final zine/book for the submission of this project and I am sad I wasn’t able to do this. However, I do understand why it wouldn’t work now, the project isn’t finished and placing images next to one another unsuccessfully will bring all the good work down. Although I decided not to submit a final zine, I did try exploring zine designs and research, and finally creating an eBook, mainly so I could see all the images, alongside one another, allowing me to realise the amount of work I had done and what I felt went well and what didn’t. So therefore I feel this eBook was the first mock-up zine for the final submission of this project, perhaps a little premature but as supporting work nothing is premature.
Being critical, not every shoot went exactly as I wished it could and this will always happen within creative work. You just have to learn from each mistake. My first mistake was believing that the first lighting style in the studio was going to be the final one, as still now I don’t know if my final submission images have been lit how I want them to be. However, I used this mistake and made sure I had enough time to explore different lighting styles, both myself in the studio and via artist research, and so I created better quality images because of this mistake. My second mistake was thinking that certain images could be placed together without any visual markers, whether it is composition, object, lighting, background or colour. This I realised towards the end of this module, when editing for my submission, and I am glad I realised this because it has meant I will really consider each shoot in connection with the others within the next module as then all the images will be able to sit together as a final body of work.
Overall as a project, I have really enjoyed creating the work for this module. As I stated earlier, being able to work from personal experience means that I feel extremely motivated to do this work and create it for other people interested in hair to see. At first I feel as though I found the project context quite challenging, but for the same reason I think it is now successful; personal experience. Initially starting a project which touches on your experiences brings up those experiences, and makes you remember those feelings again, however I felt it was time to create work about these past experiences, rather than keeping them to myself. The more you can put into the work personally, the more you’ll get out personally and visually. After getting over the first hurdle of personal experience, and also trying to make sure that the subject I was interested in would be interesting to others too, I was able to create work and become even more motivated. I also believe that once you make work and take photographs, your project sets off in the right direction and initially the project was slow but once I had attractive images and a good shooting strategy it was enjoyable to follow through.
This project has had a very short duration in comparison to last year and the upcoming project, however I still feel as though I organised my time efficiently. I believe I have explored my idea as fully as I could within the time available, and developed an understanding of other practitioners work in line with mine. I feel this has meant I can start the next part of the project on a good note, not thinking that I have to start from scratch, but pick up exactly where I left off. I do feel odd submitting work when the project doesn’t feel finished as I feel the work doesn’t fully live up to the concept itself, however the work being shown for submission is of great quality and illustrates my concept exactly. Its also a great point to go on from, as once I saw the prints large on the wall, I realised that I wanted to create more, that my skills were increasing and I was able to create things I didn’t think were possible. Skill-wise, I’ve developed my studio lighting skills and use of Mamiya Leaf which was an aim of mine at the beginning of this year, and I feel has developed the project further than it would have if I had stuck to what I know, lighting everything naturally and using a Hasselblad to shoot.
2321 words.
I was initially intrigued by the subject of hair due to personal experiences of hair loss, where I lost my hair at age 12. I began researching into hair and its materiality, as when I lost my hair I felt as though it was such a big deal, and that hair itself was so important to have as it shaped how I looked and who I was. I wanted to get a grasp on whether other people felt this strongly towards hair too, or whether it was interesting to me because of personal experience. I always believe that projects, where personal experience is involved, are always more successful because the artist is able to put passion and excitement into the work, and they will always be motivated to do the work because it relates to their personality.
After deciding on an initial subject, I began shooting around different subjects to do with hair. I shot hair and colour, in relation to Hanne van der Woude’s projects on redheads, and how their hair colour is dying out. As my family are all redheaded this was the perfect opportunity to photograph hair colour. I explored this idea but didn’t feel like it was really very strong. I feel as though the subject of redheads becoming ‘extinct’ has been photographed so many times and it wasn’t for me.
I explored the area of hair and texture, bringing two of my initial ideas together. This was really interesting as I placed the texture of hair alongside other natural textures such as wood and grass, to contrast naturally grown things. However, this didn’t visually take, and instead I photographed close-up images of people’s hair, realizing that I could capture the texture of hair itself through macro images. This I felt I wanted to work on further.
My final initial shooting area was the idea of ‘how people wear their hair’, with the idea that people wear their hair as an accessory, as they would clothes and make up, to create different looks, and in turn create an identity/persona/personality for themselves. After shooting this idea, I realised I wanted to continue it through the rest of the project, as the idea of body construction to create an identity really intrigued me. I also wanted to incorporate the texture of hair within this project.
After initial tutorials, I realised that the subject of this project was definitely hair and its materiality. However, I want to look at it broadly rather than choosing one of the subjects I’ve been focusing on so far, as I feel there is so much to do with hair and surrounding the area of hair that can be visually captured. Eleanor Farmer has been my main inspiration for this broadness, as she created a project, a study of blood, in which she created photographic images relating to everything blood. From her work, I decided to create a study of hair, an index of hair, focusing on everything hair. This meant portraits, still lifes, collecting hair, landscapes that imitate hair textures, hairdressers and a broad variety of images of hair construction tools.
As I had decided on a conceptual focus for my project, I experimented with shooting, taking portraits in the studio, in natural light and using both Mamiya Leaf and Hasselblad cameras. This experimentation period lasted for about half of the project, as obviously it’s been a short project, but also because I wanted to create a good selection of images so that I could choose which process was the most successful. After this experimentation, I was given feedback in which it was suggested to stay in the studio as being able to manipulate light to focus and illuminate hair was vital, but to try and use lighter more neutral backgrounds so the hair pops out from it. The Mamiya Leaf images were more successful, using a portrait lens when taking people’s photographs and the macro lens when photographing the collected hair. After this decision I continued shooting people, experimenting with different backgrounds and lighting and finally decided on lighting both the background and the subject from the front, with a neutral grey background so that the portraits pop out. This was inspired by Trine Sondergaard and her portraits, which use natural light but pointing on the subjects face, creating quite a painterly effect within the image. In terms of the still life images, there was a similar process where I researched Amber Morghan’s work, inspired by her bright colours and composition, I tried experimenting with pink backgrounds and green hair. These were less successful than the portraits as I didn’t spend as much time on these as the portraits, but they still show the hair off. The idea was to photograph them using advertising lighting, as I wanted to show the hair that I had collected as beautiful. Advertising usually promotes head hair rather than hair that’s now off the body, most people find it gross to touch hair once it comes off the head, and so these images were supposed to play with this idea, trying to sell this hair and make it beautiful, even though its off the head.
Initially, I wanted to make a book out of the images I had taken throughout this project, however after edit tutorial feedback, I realised that I shouldn’t make a book for my submission as the project definitely didn’t look finished and wouldn’t all sit together in a final book. Some images, such as the portrait ones have been very successful, but others, such as the hairdresser ones not so much, and so they could bring the whole body of work down visually and that wouldn’t be good. Submission-wise the decision was to print the most successful portrait and still life images to show the array of work I have created and also the experimentation process and different lighting styles. Printing them large allows me to see what has been successful and what hasn’t, and helps me get to the next step in deciding the final lighting styles.
In terms of contextual research, I luckily chose a similar subject for my IRP module and so have been reading around the subject of hair and identity throughout the past months. Main contextual research has come from media writing, such as The Media and Body Image and Media Culture, which both specifically write about body image in relation to the media, how the body is always being constructed and how we portray our own identity through this construction. These readings have really informed my understanding of why we want to change our appearances in order to look a certain way, as we are so influenced by the media and fashion trends, that we will construct our looks, and in turn our hair, according to the latest trends. Not only has these readings influenced my thought process but they’ve also influenced the next step in the project, as I feel I should ask people about why they do what they do with their hair, why they construct themselves in order to seem a certain way.
As a final piece, I am really pleased with the images I printed. The process of printing the images took a decent amount of time, mainly to make sure all the colours were printed correctly, along with actual technical printer issues, in which lines were printed all over my images. However, after sorting these out and correctly printing, the images came out really well. The colours were all balanced properly, meaning the face tones were neutral and not oddly toned. In terms of the prints seen altogether, they look slightly different in lighting and composition. This was because the images have come from different shoots in which different lighting styles and lenses were used. This meant that some photographs have quite strong contrasting lighting on the models faces, with a lighter background colour on the left than the right, creating shadow on the face. Whereas other portraits were taken with quite rounded lighting, and so the images are more flat and light evenly throughout with barely any visible shadows. I feel as though this may matter if it was an actual final submission piece for the end of a project, but the fact that I am continuing this project onto the next module allows me to submit work that’s still in progress and that looks different because its all still in its experimental stages. So placing these images next to one another, a slight different will be seen, but that is on purpose. That will allow me to see which lighting style has been the most successful.
Obviously I wanted to create a final zine/book for the submission of this project and I am sad I wasn’t able to do this. However, I do understand why it wouldn’t work now, the project isn’t finished and placing images next to one another unsuccessfully will bring all the good work down. Although I decided not to submit a final zine, I did try exploring zine designs and research, and finally creating an eBook, mainly so I could see all the images, alongside one another, allowing me to realise the amount of work I had done and what I felt went well and what didn’t. So therefore I feel this eBook was the first mock-up zine for the final submission of this project, perhaps a little premature but as supporting work nothing is premature.
Being critical, not every shoot went exactly as I wished it could and this will always happen within creative work. You just have to learn from each mistake. My first mistake was believing that the first lighting style in the studio was going to be the final one, as still now I don’t know if my final submission images have been lit how I want them to be. However, I used this mistake and made sure I had enough time to explore different lighting styles, both myself in the studio and via artist research, and so I created better quality images because of this mistake. My second mistake was thinking that certain images could be placed together without any visual markers, whether it is composition, object, lighting, background or colour. This I realised towards the end of this module, when editing for my submission, and I am glad I realised this because it has meant I will really consider each shoot in connection with the others within the next module as then all the images will be able to sit together as a final body of work.
Overall as a project, I have really enjoyed creating the work for this module. As I stated earlier, being able to work from personal experience means that I feel extremely motivated to do this work and create it for other people interested in hair to see. At first I feel as though I found the project context quite challenging, but for the same reason I think it is now successful; personal experience. Initially starting a project which touches on your experiences brings up those experiences, and makes you remember those feelings again, however I felt it was time to create work about these past experiences, rather than keeping them to myself. The more you can put into the work personally, the more you’ll get out personally and visually. After getting over the first hurdle of personal experience, and also trying to make sure that the subject I was interested in would be interesting to others too, I was able to create work and become even more motivated. I also believe that once you make work and take photographs, your project sets off in the right direction and initially the project was slow but once I had attractive images and a good shooting strategy it was enjoyable to follow through.
This project has had a very short duration in comparison to last year and the upcoming project, however I still feel as though I organised my time efficiently. I believe I have explored my idea as fully as I could within the time available, and developed an understanding of other practitioners work in line with mine. I feel this has meant I can start the next part of the project on a good note, not thinking that I have to start from scratch, but pick up exactly where I left off. I do feel odd submitting work when the project doesn’t feel finished as I feel the work doesn’t fully live up to the concept itself, however the work being shown for submission is of great quality and illustrates my concept exactly. Its also a great point to go on from, as once I saw the prints large on the wall, I realised that I wanted to create more, that my skills were increasing and I was able to create things I didn’t think were possible. Skill-wise, I’ve developed my studio lighting skills and use of Mamiya Leaf which was an aim of mine at the beginning of this year, and I feel has developed the project further than it would have if I had stuck to what I know, lighting everything naturally and using a Hasselblad to shoot.
2321 words.