Kate Mellor

The reason i decided to look at the work of Kate Mellor is that when i saw her photograph 'Bagni di Lucca' in portfolio #28 her use of simple framing and use of light to create atmopshere was stunning. The image depicts a deralict building in which the empty framework of a chair sits, like a skeleton in an abandoned room to which nature has taken back. The thin vines reflect the skeleton structure of the chair and the main light intrails from a glass-less hole in which was once a window, in direct path of the window to the camera is a pool of rippling water reflecting the sunlight off and illuminating the room. The dark greens and blues of the image maintain the dark feel to the image while still retaining the light and contrasts greatly. 
On firther reserch the image was actaully from a collection titled ' In The Steps Of Robert Pinnacle' In which she was commissioned to photograph and document European spa towns and based the work on the paitings of Robert Pinnacle who used to visit these places. And while my favourite photos in this collection would be that of the abandoned buildings where nature meets the distruction of human ruins, all of the photographs have this amazing atmosphere and feelto them, im guessing aided by the use of the Pinhole camera and the distortion it makes.  She actually reconstructs the images that Robert Pinnacle painted, and i never really thought of that as an idea, of using painting as an idea of work. Maybe this is something i can look into further in the future? looking at how fear was percieved in the past in other forms of art and basing my own work as a modern uptake of that? 
even the idea of an empty abandoned room could even be used to represent fear of abandondment, or lonliness?  I just love the eerie feel given to some of the images by the distortion from the pinhole camera. Maybe i could try some experiments with one? 

 

research

so far ive have found it pretty hard to find people that cover the idea of fear so ive tried to find photographers who have looked at similar sections of what i want to achieve in my photos, looking at people who:

• create atmopsheric photographs
• themes similar to fear
• diptycs 
• uniformed portraits 

so for each of the photographers/artists that i look at i will state what it is about that persons work that made me think of this project.

Ideas

Laying in bed in the dark thinking over uni ideas it occured to me that the noises mixed with the stillness of my room and the darkness where only outlines are depicted take me back to when I was a child and I didn't like to sleep in total darkness, the mind plays tricks, even the sound of the base from a distant car sounded weird and distorted mixed with the outlines. It would be difficult to get photos that dark without long exposures or by adding little light but even the light from my phone makes the room look different, maybe playing with this abit will help, but its given me an idea on how to make a photo/sound instillation on the idea of fear of the dark. Just a quick camera phone photo u can't really depict anything
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Todays reading is all about the horror genre 'the horror genre: from beelzebub to blair witch' by paul wells, after reading about joshua hof's horror photography based on fears. And maybe helping me to shrink down my ideas.
my notes from this will be in my pocket notebook. 
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fear drawing

I found this drawing on a random blog, it has no artist name however but i really like the atmosphere of the image, and the idea of all those people crawling around. The idea of a mass of people is one of the fears i wanted to look at, some people i know have a fear of large groups of people or crowded places and this image sums it up. I like the bear tree in the background and i also like the idea that the landscapes reflect the feelings given off by the image.

Joshua Hoffine

One of the first photographers i found that worked with Fears was the work of Joshua Hoffine. Joshua focuses on Horror photography based around the ideas and psycholo

gy of fears. While his work is very graphic its also very atmospheric and often features children in situations which are horrific. He plays on the ideas of childhood and fear, and wants to audience to empathyse with the children hin his images. 

He classes his work as horror photography, and while i understand the idea of horror in photography i never really thought as the genre in a sence of photography and often automatically jumped to the idea of video and film. Even art in a sence i seemed to skip over the idea of horror in art (which is something i want to look at later on anyway) Horror as an art often draws its strength from the subcontious which links in with Hoffines view of the link between horror and psychology and in his own words  'Horror photography is able to present these abstract and forgotten fears into literal terms'

While most of his images look fake and photoshopped Hoffine uses the directorial approach making each image like a movie set with SFX makeup, lighting and sets, and the actors are nearly always family members and friends, often using his daughters for the photographs. 

His imagery is very obvious and very straight forward, its not really subtle but then its trying to portray the realism that you experience as a child when your scared of something. He focuses on big fears such as fears of spiders, the death of a loved one ect. and often uses atmospheric lighting to help achieve the overall fear. The gore in some images are over the top and near on always the horrific person is played by adults. Maybe thats making a statement about the relationship between children and adults and there reactions to fear.

In comparison the children in the images are often overly innocent, in nightclothes or uniforms or even in nothing but underwear.  While the most gorey images are without children. 

His artists statement states: 

'I try to present the images within the visual grammer of the child. i want the viewer to empathize with the child, to share their point of view, to feal there vunerablity. the images stress danger and depict amoral world where purity and innocence are under constant threat. Like fairytales these photographs function as cautionary metaphors about the potential dangers of the world'

I really love the image set inside the keyhole, as in a child is looking in, or is locked inside a closet. Its amazing some of his images such as the bath scene and the detailing on it, while the childrens images are rather more  disterbing because of the child being present and instincs set in so that the audience want to protect the child.

'fear of the dark'

My intial idea for photos based around the idea of the fear of the dark was to take places such as closits and under the bed, asosiated as a child with monsters and fear and to use lighting to create a look that the light is coming within the area. To start of with this idea i did a practice shoot as it was getting dark of my closit using the only detacable light i have which is a small red alien that glows, and trying to work out how to create the look i wish to achieve as im not very confident with lighting. I basically used long exposures to measure the effect it had on the image, my first quiery was that the light i was using wasnt bright enough to give off the effect that i wanted to achieve. i would need a much more powerful light so i may have to experiment with getting out a lighting kit to see how that would work. Then i also worked out a problem that the longer the exposure the more light the room would getbut the brighter and better the light in the closit would be. Hopefully by using a more powerful light that i wouldnt need the exposure longer to get the same effect but as my liught wasnt as powerful. I also think that the room was already just abit to light to get the effect i wanted, it wasnt quite fully dark. So next experiment i want it darker, with a bigger light. Im rather lucky that my house at the moment has alot of unusal closits that i can use or experiment with and i can also translate it to under the bed too, tho this would be more tricky as i wouldnt be able touse a lighting pack for risk of setting fire to my bed.If i go for later in the eve and darker i would prob have to use a filling light so its not to dark but bouce it off a wall out of shot? 
I dont like the layout and the framing of the photos but as they are only experiments i dont think thats importnant.