Cecil Beaton - Beneath the Glitter! *

As Beaton is my chosen artist for my 'Body shoot', I took out a documentary from the library to get an insight on the artist himself and what he really thought of the people he photographed.

As Beaton grew up he realised his background is not something he would have chosen for himself.

So, photography was his ticket to get out of middle-class respectability - that world into an interesting world. - He began taking photographs at home go his sisters, dressing them up in elaborate costumes and getting furniture out into the garden. Beaton learnt how to create dream like + theatrical environments around his sisters.

Importance of his photography was about where the sitter belonged, the props+lighting

His two sisters - Baba and Nancy 

Nancy Beaton 

- Although Beaton's mother was the daughter of a BlackSmith, Beaton would cast her as the society lady. He wanted to promote himself to the upper-classe's and get his photos published in society magazines like Takler.

Beaton was the favourite photographer of the royal family, his sumptuous portraits flattered his favourite subjects and behind the glitter, Beaton was uneasy about the world he portrayed so elegantly. 

- Mario Testino states how much Beaton has left us an enormous document of his time and how much he's learnt from it today by looking at his work.

- Beaton lived through Beauty in his photography - not just about beautiful features but the notion of high style, elegant living, the person and the environment. 

Beaton was happy to manipulate his subjects appearances into an ideal image of beauty.

He would do a lot of work on his contact prints - virtually would re-draw them

(chest area was lowered, nose were straight and moustaches were illuminated)

It was this, BEATON'S TOUCH which led to demands of his work in New York + Hollywood 

The reason why Beaton was noticed and demanded was due to the fact that his technique was all new in those days, especially to Vogue - as Beaton redefined the style of fashion photographs with his flamboyant use of background and light and revolutionised the way movie stars were photographed.

*Photo-shoot of Monroe

Mario Testino stated - ''Hardest thing to do is to photograph a person, is to get something that the person wants to give to you that won't give you that won't give to anyone else - Beaton captured something inside Monroe's images.

*Photo-shoot of Twiggy

Beaton stated ''This child, she's as light as air, we can't possibly photograph her on the ground, she's really like ariel. Have to punch her on furniture like Tinker bell.

With these photographs Beaton cristimized the 60's. 

David Hockney - Secret Knowledge

''Pictures give evidence, Lens and Mirrors make pictures''

''For an artist to see it, is to use it''

David Hockney is an artist who uses the style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout, so that the subject would actually move while being photographed and it would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographers perspective. - Although later Hockney decided to change the technique and moved the camera around the subject instead.

*Hockney also designs is own Hollywood sets

In this fascinating documentary I learnt something about paintings that absolutely stunned me as it was unexpected - something that never crossed my mind nor my peers about the technique that artists used 600years ago around 1450- Something that artists even now would not have thought of.

Artists such as Caravagio -( whose work I saw in Italy (Rome) in the summer )

used a curved mirror (lens) focusing the sun rays and burning an image - then traced their subject on canvas.

http://kennywordsmith.hubpages.com/hub/Supper-at-Emmaus

This method of conquered mirror was used for 1 century -(by using a mirror you can only produce a small image 320cm) until the lens was invented which is more versatile. 

Art in Progress-Gregory Crewdson

''If you could freeze a moment in your dream and really look at it in every detail and every aspect of it, you will be in of Crewdsons images'' - This has inspired me to create set builds of what I dream about

Crewdson's earliest work was in 1988 - Spittfields America (Peoples houses/neighbours)
His father was a Psychoanalyst and in Crewdsons teenagehood there was a moment where he used to listen in through the floorboards as his father worked with his patients. - Classic Psychoanalytical father moment.

Crewdson used to attempt, never really heard anything but listen to whats going on beneath the surface.

I feel as if Crewdson imagines that was him as a young boy in the image above - boy with hand in drain (2001) 

Watching this documentary I finally got to see how Crewdson creates his images and where his ideas generate from. He stated that he finds ideas and locations whilst driving around for days. 

''When you see something that feels right and respond to Architecture and setting thats important''

His work comes from what he sees as American Sensibility tradition for instance - paintings of Edward Hopper. 

*Similar emptiness and theme (Ordinary life)

*Crewdson wants to capture emptiness (timeless) and aimless in his images like how Spittsfield is. 

Crewdson stated for him first and for most is to make a beautiful picture but if its just purely ecstatic experience, its not good enough. That meaning needs to be undercut to something psychological or dangerous or desirous/fearful. Ultimately I want it all to become one world in itself. 

- He uses Light to establish a world and tell a story!

War Photography - James Nachtwey

Not only by watching this documentary did I learn what it takes to be a war photographer but I learnt the type of person you may become afterwards or even during taking these brutal images.
You become strong as you know you are the only person who can give these people a voice, but it can turn you very emotional, witnessing such unpleasant scenes and moments in these poor peoples lives.

''It;s hard to divide your attention, emotion+energy, you have to be single minded''

- He is a mystery and a loner - sometimes you have to be to work that well and give so much of yourself.

Nachtwey decided in the early 1970's to become a war photographer during Vietnam - it affected him so much that he decided to follow on that tradition of War photography. 

The images from Vietnam were straight forward documentary images- powerful indictment the war and how unjust and cruel it was.  

However, for Nachtwey to go on with this he first had to convince himself that he could do this before even convincing others and also had to learn in taking pictures - how to develop a personal vision, how to express his own feelings. In order to do that he had to get in touch with his own feelings.

Natchwey states ''It was true photography though the discipline of the frame' 

It became the way he discovered himself and the world.

In 1980 he woke up one night with a very clear idea that now he's learned everything he can learn and now is the time to go to New York to become a War Photographer. 

Natchwey felt like he was witnessing history not from an academic point of view, not from a distance but really what happens to ordinary people in the course of history. 

He feels as if in a way this was a lot like theatre but instead of being in the audience, he was on the stage and the script was being written minute by minute as it went along and you had to understand and anticipate and connect with it emotionally+intellectually what was going on so you can follow it. 

''These photos would not have been made without the acceptance of the people and complicity. They understand that a stranger has come with a camera to show the rest of the world what is happening to them - it gives them a voice to the outside world that they otherwise wouldn't have. 

SOMALIA

In 1992, this child was feeling such a hunger as you will probably never feel in your life. Necked, with no hope for the future and born in a world that has no means to support him, this Somali child seems to have no reason to keep fighting. How many children must died of famine since then and how much food did we throw away last year? 

- ''FEAR is not important, its about how you deal with it. Not about the pain, its about how you manage it'' - JN

INDONESIA 

This photo of a one-arm, one-leg beggar washing his child in a polluted river is heart-breaking. Despite his poverty, despite his extreme handicap, he still finds the power to take care of his son. And we are complaining of not having hot water one day…

AFGHANISTAN

This beautiful yet, apocalyptic image is telling us the story of a war: The civil war in Afghanistan turned Kabul into ruins. On this background, the white image of this covered lady seems a ghost rather than a human being.

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What I learnt from Nachtweys images is that he channels his emotions into his pictures and that he tries to focus and pre-visualise situations he might get in and run them through his mind. It's very sub-concisious of how he prepares himself mentally. 

Ways Of Seeing by John Berger

Today I got out 'ways of seeing' dvd from the uni library to get knowledge on the impact of Photography and to also look out the view of everyones appreciation of Art from the past.

This documentary gave me an insight on how paintings changed the world and then turned into photography. I learnt that the tradition of European painting was born in 1400 and died in 1900. It also makes us see paintings as nobody saw them before. But why do we?

If discovered why this is so, we shall also discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are living. I learnt that the process of seeing paintings or anything else is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe.

*All large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention of perspective which is unique to European Art and perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder!

For example; like a beam from a light house - only instead of light travelling outward, appearance has travelled in, and the tradition of art called those appearances REALITY.

What Berger has stated is that perspective is the thing which makes the eye the centre of the world, however the human eye can only be at one place at a time. - It takes its visible world with it as it walks

-With the invention of the camera everything changed, as we could see things that were not really there in front of us. And this made appearances travel across the world!

Dzega Vertof - (Russian film director) - The man with the moving camera 1928

Vertof wrote;

*I'm the eye, a mechanical eye 

I the machine show your world the only way I can see it

I free myself from today and forever from human immobility

I'm in constant movement, I approach and pull away from objects

I creep under them, I rung alongside a moving horses mouth. I fall under eyes with the falling rising body's

This is I the machine, mouvering in the kayo tic movements 

recording one movement after another, most complex combinations free from the boundaries of time and space. I co-ordinate only and all points of the universe wherever I want them to be

My way leads to a fresh perception of the world

Thus I explain, in a new way the world unknown to you

^^ A powerful statement which does make you think about how the camera actually does allow you to photograph the world unknown to yourself and others. So, the invention of the camera has changed not only what we see, but HOW we see it. - which is very important.