Photographic starting points to support year 13 students in interrogating the exam theme.

1. TRUTH, FANTASY OR FICTION
A2 Unit 4 2016

2. Truth

3. Olivia Parker, Whelks (from "Lost Objects
portfolio), 1980
Olivia Parker often produces intricate
still life photographs of natural
objects. The apparent simplicity of
her technique acts to emphasise the
complexity of these natural forms –
the hard shell which had at one time
contained the soft living creature, the
feather which once adorned the a
bird’s exterior.
Photographic document: it is what it is

4. Laura Letinsky Edward Weston

5. An objective representation?
Rineka Dijkstra
established her
reputation with a
series of photographs
made of young
people aged at that
difficult time
between childhood
and adulthood which
all humans must
traverse.
Krazyhouse

6. Dianne Arbus is known for
her photographs of those
on the ‘fringe’ or edge of
conventional society:
transvestites, circus
performers, dwarves and
so on. These people often
lived within society and
yet were simultaneously a
set apart.

7. Walker Evans "Subway Photographs" (1938-1941)
Marcus Bumbot
Excursie la Sulina, 2011
Henri Cartier Bresson

8. Nick Waplington, The Living Room 1992
Nan Goldin
Tina Barney

9. A photographic document
Walker Evans, and more recently Rut Blees and Simon Norfolk, approach the need to document
‘real’ situations.
Simon Norfolk
Rut Blees

10. Bernd and Hilla Becher, photographing seemingly mundane forms such as industrial water
towers, famously attempted to produce a ‘typology’ of forms.
Idris Khan layered the separate images
by the Bechers to create a homage.

11. A room with a view
Dear Stranger,
I am an artist working on a photographic project which
involves people I do not know…I would like to take a
photograph of you standing in your front room from
the street in the evening. A camera will be set outside
the window on the street. If you do not mind being
photographed, please stand in the room and look into
the camera through the window for 10 minutes on __-
__-__ (date and time)…I will take your picture and
then leave…we will remain strangers to each other…If
you do not want to get involved, please simply draw
your curtains to show your refusal…I really hope to see
you from the window.
Shizuka Yokomizo, 'Stranger' project
The frame is dictated by the shape of the window and
so the choice is not the photographer’s. Are these
truthful, objective representations or the individuals
who are photographed?

12. To crop or not to crop?
Cropping is different to framing. Framing is what you do when you take the picture, working
out what to include and what to exclude. Cropping happens later, either in the darkroom
during enlarging and printing, or in digital editing software.
Henri Cartier-Bresson carefully framed his
photographs but believed strongly that
photographs should not be cropped in the
darkroom.
Interviewer: You’ve been known for never cropping your photos.
Do you want to say anything about that?
HCB: About cropping? [...] I will get closer, or further, there’s an
emphasis on the subject, and if the relations, the interplay of lines
is correct, well, it is there. If it’s not correct it’s not by cropping in
the darkroom and making all sorts of tricks that you improve it. If a
picture is mediocre, well it remains mediocre. The thing is done,
once for all.
This approach is often referred to as the Decisive Moment, after the English title of his
famous book. His prints feature a black border (see above) to indicate the edge of the
negative, proof that no cropping has taken place.
However, lots of other photographs are routinely cropped, especially those that appear in
newspapers and magazines, often accompanied by words.

13. Take a look at John Hilliard's 'Cause of Death’(1974). We are presented with four
images featuring what looks like a dead body. The death appears to have four separate
causes: Crushed, Drowned, Burned, Fell.

14. However, we soon realise
that the body is identical
in all four pictures. The
image below shows how
Hilliard cropped a single
photograph, in four ways,
to tell four different
stories.
For much of its history,
photography was seen as
a kind of evidence, proof
that something had
happened. Hilliard is
interested in the ways
photographs can be used
to provide unreliable
evidence, to tell lies and
deceive. They do this by
only ever showing us part
of the whole truth.

15. Surveillance: Capturing a truth
Derived from the French word ‘surveiller’, meaning ‘to keep watch’ or ‘to watch over’, the
surveillance camera has been used to police borders, to assist war-time reconnaissance, to
gain advantage over political enemies or simply to gather information. Techniques of
surveillance are closely linked to developments in photographic technology – from the
earliest aerial photographs to satellite pictures. In the twenty-first century, cameras on
street corners, in shops and public buildings silently record our every move, while web-
based tools such as Google Earth adapt satellite technology to ensure that there is no
escape from the camera’s all-seeing eye.
Jonathan Olley
Grosvenor Road RUC Police Station, Grosvenor Road, Central
Belfast 1998
Jonathan Olley
RUC Police Station and British Army Patrol Base, Strabane, Co.
Tyrone 1998
Thomas Demand
Camera 2007

16. Laurie Long
Compact, from The Dating Surveillance Project 1998
Laurie Long
Hairbrush, from The Dating Surveillance Project 1998

17. Mary Alpern: ‘Shopping’
With a tiny surveillance camera and a video camcorder hidden in her discreetly perforated
purse, Alpern wandered through department stores, malls, and fitting rooms.
The images in "Shopping" (all 1999) are painstakingly culled from hours of accumulated
footage, are in a sense arbitrary and unmoored - even the camera was detached from the
photographer's eye.

18. Fantasy

19. Surrealism movement- dreams and fantasy
Man Ray
MagritteHerbert Bayer

20. Surrealists such as Man Ray, Wanda Wulz and later Erwin Blumenfeld, used photograms,
montage and double exposure to play with expectation and narrative.

21. Refined in the 1970s by photographers such as Duane Michals, fantasy and surrealism
continued to be a fertile ground for experimentation.

22. Erin Chase Andrea Constantini
John Stezaker Mitsuko Nagone
John Stezaker’s combined faces are just the starting points for unexpected and surreal
departures into fantasies of the unconscious.

23. Joe WebbLaura GuarieBeethy Photography
Mariana Abasolo
Surreal Cut Away

24. Jean FaucheurDavid Samuel SternAnonymous
Jordan Clark Anonymous

25. Diane Meyer
Ana Teresa Barboza
Kay S LawrenceRobert Mann
Surreal Embellishments

26. Lynn Skordal Bene Rohlmann Collage Analogico Toshiaki Uchida
Joe Webb Hannah Hoch
Surreal Collages
Laszlo Moholy Nagy

27. Ex-students responses to politically motivated collage techniques and Moholy Nagy.
Jamie Denny
Florence Clapcott

28. Ulric Collette
Ex-student:
Lydia Francis
Impossible

29. Shadows
PoL Úbeda Hervàs
Sam Taylor Wood
Floris Neusüss

30. David McKean
Illustrate a poem, lyric, fairytale... Combine real and fake elements
when taking the photograph. Edit digitally or draw /collage into
the image.

31. Fiction

32. Nick Knight used a selection of photographic
imagery, submitted by SHOWstudio viewers, to
inspire an experimental musical performance
of Antony Hegarty, lead singer of Antony and
the Johnsons. The visuals were projected onto
Antony and incorporated over 500
contributions.
The project's spectacular finalé piece is a
fantasy of colour and imagined forms often
closer to the appearance of paintings than
photographs.
http://showstudio.com/project/antony/film
The fashion photographer Nick Knight’s
statement
‘I think photography has been wrestling with
a burden of telling the truth, which I don’t
think it was ever particularly good at’
implies a sense of possible liberation from the
need to record ‘reality’.
Nick Knight

33. Great way to
develop your
photography or
experimentation
skills by doing some
projection
photography. Could
link it to hidden
identity, disguise,
alter ego/multiple
personalities or
expression.

34. The camera never lies?
Brian Walski combined two photographs he’d
taken during the Iraq war to create the most
dramatic composition. Unfortunately he was
caught out and lost all credibility as a
Photojournalist.
Photographic Truth
In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes wrote that
a photograph could be a ‘certificate of
presence’ – an unbiased record of reality. Is
this the case? Do we still look to photographs
to show a true image of the world around us
or has the digital age brought the whole
notion of photographic truth into doubt?

35. Cottingley fairies, 1917 Yevgeny Khaldei, 1945
Khaldei
As iconic as the image is, it
has raised some
controversy because it was
staged. Khaldei recreated
the event, using a
handmade flag sewn by a
tailor, and later added
smoke to the photograph
for dramatic effect, and
airbrushed off one of two
wristwatches worn by one
of the soldiers, for fear the
soldier would be branded a
thief.
Cottingley, a village outside Bradford in Yorkshire,
would have remained in much deserved obscurity
had not 16-year-old Elsie Wright taken a remarkable
photograph of her ten-year-old cousin, Frances
Griffiths, playing with 'fairies' on the banks of a
stream which ran behind the garden of Elsie's
house.
Arthur Wright willingly agreed to lend his daughter
his camera when she said she wanted to take a
photograph of Frances by the stream.
Knowledge of photography was not widespread at
this time. As a result, many Spiritualists were
encouraged to believe that the camera could 'see'
what the naked eye could not, a belief which helped
legitimise the Cottingley fairy photographs.

36. Fiction: Narrative, Tracey Moffatt
The Movie Star (1985), the aboriginal actor
David Gulpili drinks a beer and reclines lazily
across a car hood, appropriating the stance of
white Australian surfers as they are popularly
displayed in the media.
‘Something More’ has the style of a set of stills
for a film about the trials of a poor but restless
‘coloured’ girl in rural Australia who wants
‘something more’ out of life than her lot in the
back-blocks. In the opening shot, the would-be
heroine wears an exotic Asian dress and later
steals an old evening gown in her quest for a
new identity. After various fragmented images
of her encounters and adventures, the
heroine’s ambitions to cross into the world of
glamour and luxury are thwarted and she dies
on the road which promised escape from her
origins.

37. Sherman works in series, typically
photographing herself in a range of costumes.
For example, in her landmark 69 photograph
series, the Complete Untitled Film Stills, (1977-
1980) Sherman appeared as B-movie, foreign
film and film noir style actresses. Although
Sherman does not consider her work feminist,
many of her photo-series, like the 1981
"Centerfolds," call attention to the
stereotyping of women in films, television and
magazines.
Fictitious Identity: Cindy Sherman

38. Cindy Sherman responses
by ex-student, Lydia Francis

39. Hendrik Kerstens
Hendrik explores some of the many intersections between painting and photography. Using his
daughter Paula as his only subject, Kerstens not only photographs her in reference to Old
Master Dutch painting but also in relation to her own life and the world we live in today. From
early on, he became increasingly interested in combining the art of photographic portraiture
with the game of creating a conceptual and sometimes humorous dialog between past and
present. In "Bag", a plastic grocery bag is shaped to look like a lace hood.
Life Imitating Art, Imitating Life

40. ‘Referring to both vulnerability and impermanence, I'm investigating the texture and feel of
both the present and past. Since 2007 I'm working on the series 'foam sculptures': caps and
collars, inspired by 16th and 17th century paintings, made from materials currently used for
packaging and insulation. This is also an inferior material which is often discarded after use. By
using this material I make a reference to consumerism and the rapid circulation of materials.
With these foam sculptures, but also an i-pod, a tattoo and a foot in plaster, we end up in the
21st century.’
Suzanne Jongmans:

41. Tom Hunter
Life and Death in Hackney,
John Everett Millais
‘Ophelia’, 1851-52
Tom Hunter: Life and Death in Hackney
This maligned and somewhat abandoned area of Hackney became the epicentre of the new
warehouse rave scene of the early 90’s. During this time the old print factories, warehouses
and workshops became the playground of a disenchanted generation, taking the DIY culture
from the free festival scene and adapting it to the urban wastelands. Hunter’s images draw
upon these influences combining the beauty and the degradation with everyday tales of
abandonment and loss to music and hedonism. The reworking of John Millais’s ‘Ophelia’
shows a young girl whose journey home from one such rave was curtailed by falling into the
canal and losing herself to the dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era.

42. Tom Hunter
Woman Reading a Possession Order
Tom Hunter: Persons Unknown
‘This series of photographs was taken in my street in Hackney, 1997. Myself and the
residents who made up this community were fighting eviction as squatters. The title of the
series comes from the wording used in our eviction orders. The postures and gestures
reference Vermeer's paintings and set out to give status and dignity to our community.’
Tom Hunter
The Art of Squatting
Jan Vermeer
The Art of Painting, 1666
Tom Hunter
The Anthropologist
Jan Vermeer
The Geographer, 1668
Jan Vermeer
Woman in Blue reading a letter, 1662

43. Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall
Gust of Wind, 1993
Hokusai
Gust of Wind, 1832
In the case of A Sudden Gust of Wind the source material is a Nineteenth Century Japanese
woodcut, though Wall also references paintings from Western art history. In the main his
use of historical source material is less obvious – and less precisely referenced – than is the
case with ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind’.
The work is carefully constructed. Wall photographed different elements of the scene over
a period of several months, before seamlessly collaging these together in digital post-
production. It’s not clear what brings the four main protagonists to this place; two look
dressed for the location but the other two look more like businessmen in their suits and
overcoats. Whatever the contents of the file of papers, it seems likely that most will now be
lost to the unexpected gust of wind that has also taken the Trilby hat of one of the men.

44. Gregory Crewdson (27 mins)
Gregory Crewdson summary (5 mins)
Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the
documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of
filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson’s method is equally filmic,
building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent.
In a Crewdson photograph, the world as we know it has been re-ordered to a perfect, still,
moment. In the Hokusai print, the artist has drawn us another world. We are no longer
seeing the world as we know it, but a world previously unexisting — we are (if the artist is
succesful) excited by line and shape and colour and somewhere in there, content and
narrative. We do not need to believe, only imagine.

45. Ex-student response to Crewdson.
What happened before, what happens next?

46. Gillian Wearing: Fictitious Family
Using masks, prosthetics and make up Wearing transformed herself into different
members of her family.