Fakery and text- Sophie calle

Ive always been a fan of sophie calle and her use of text and imagery. Her work has heavily influenced other projects of mine. Her book entited 'true stories' is a great guide to my current work.The True Stories project blurs the boundaries between truth and the made-up in a series of autobiographical text-image pairings, depicting such events as Calle’s disturbing turn as a life model whose drawn image is slashed with razor blades; her various weddings and almost-weddings; and her progress from privileged adolescence to heavily-documented adulthood with the accompanying threats of plastic surgery, negotiating sexuality and meeting fans. Perhaps, then, it is for her extensions of the photographic away from objectivity and into the subjective and fictive realms, as well as for exploring photography’s relationship with text. I like the way calle depicts her images as well as the way that she uses text, as well as suggestive imagery to suggest truth when actually the images are staged or lies. 

Final selection of images.

So after looking back over my images that i have i think i have found my final selection. Removing the two images that didnt work from my last look into the final selection and replacing them with two images from my latest photoshoot i was able to create an astetic that i am proud of, all the images seem to work well together, they all have the right feel to them.

The two images that were replaced, were replaced by the images:

which are far more fitting to the collection and work better as a whole.

Fakery- Sarah Connell

Sarah Connells project entitled 'encountering another reality'is another project based around this idea of fakery, and creativing images that look like they are more then what they should be. Here using a mixture of techniques, focusing on light and shape Connell creates the impression of a glowing figure appearing. The sequentual images show the different stages of the appearitions appearing to the camera, with movement and the different in lighting and shapes.

 Another thing i found interesting about Connell is that she posted on her website the sketchbook pages and how she went about this. While she isnt really claiming the images are real, she has worked hard to make these images look real or what could be seen as real to the audience.

Grace Dieu Shoot 3

I had a few odd occurences with this film. The spool got jammed and lead to images overlapping, as well as while trying to fix that, i got slight light leaks onto the film. This film came out more like the images that i wished to achieve then the other films. The movement and the distortions as well as the impact created by the light leaks which on some images have created an unusul effect. the images are more ambiguous and interesting with the distortion allowing the image and the audience to connect and explore.

 an example of where the film jammed on the spool and the effect it created on the negative

 the 'ghostly' caused by light leaking onto the film and creating one of the interesting and usual effects.

one of the more distored and out of focus images that is more in the style and in keeping of the images i already have shot

Fakery- the Cottingley Fairies

In July 1917, two young girls claimed to have taken photographs of real life fairies at the bottom of their garden. When the genius behind the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, presented the pictures to the public as evidence of the existence of fairies, the tale of the two little girls in Cottingley was immortalised. Later on in life, the girls admitted to the images being faked. infact they were just cardboard cutouts of fairies placed in different locations around the girls and the garden.  While one of the girls dad knew that they were messing around with the camera and paper fairys drawn by one of the girls, he didnt know of what a phenominon they would become. The images came under much screteny and were sent to kodak for analysis.  there findings were: The negatives are single exposure The plates show no sign of being faked work, but that cannot be taken as conclusive evidence of genuineness Kodak's were not willing to give any certificate concerning them because photography lent itself to a multitude of processes, and some clever operator might have made them artificially The studio chief added that he thought the photographs might have been made by using the glen features and the girl as a background; then enlarging prints from these and painting in the figures; then taking half- plate and finally quarter-plate snaps, suitably lighted. All this, he agreed, would be clever work and take time A remark made by one, as we were thanking them and bidding good-bye, was that "after all, as fairies couldn't be true, the photographs must have been faked somehow the images were later admitted to be faked by card backed drawings and hat pins. but the legacy had lived on for 60 odd years. one of the clear real fakes of our time.

Grace Dieu Shoot 2

Revisiting Grace Dieu, this place had such a good feel to it. In the middle of a feild in the middle of some woods the area and surrounds are just beautiful. The place itself like the other locations ive been looking are pretty much ruins.

again a mixture of different techniques. some of these images came out just to clear for what im aiming for with my images and while its good for experimentation its not really what i need. I need distrorted to fit in witht he other images.  while some had a darker feel to them, more so then some of the others, they just dont fit well in comparison to the other images that i am including.

Fakery- The Hoax archive

website

While looking for famous faked images i came across this website, the hoax archive, which works as a data base for famous hoax images and faked photos.
I thought it would be good to explore the images through the years in a comparison and this allows me to see some of the greats in such an easy way, as well as exposing my knowlage to new images and hoaxs. While alot of the images show mytical creatures, edited images with things added or removed as there is such a vastamount i will be focusing on just images that are charactorised as spiritual.

First faked image

The first recorded event of a staged photo was of M. Bayard who was said to be in the race for creating the first photographic image in the 1830's. After loosing to be the first, he decided to photograph how he felt about coming second and with the use of a staged photo, and added caption:

The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. "As far as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. The Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life....! ... He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him. Ladies and gentlemen, you'd better pass along for fear of offending your sense of smell, for as you can observe, the face and hands of the gentleman are beginning to decay."
He had created the first faked image. This really does just go to show how text can influence imagery. 

First faked spirit photo

The first spirit 'faked' image was in 1861 by a photographer and etchist named Mumler. One day, after developing a self-portrait, he noticed what appeared to be the shadowy figure of a young girl floating beside his own likeness. Mumler assumed it was an accident, the trace of an earlier negative made with the same plate, but friends told him the figure resembled his dead cousin. Soon the unusual photo (top) came to the attention of the spiritualist community, who proclaimed it to be the first photo ever taken of a spirit. Mumler didn't argue with them. Instead he took advantage of the interest in the photo to go into business as the world's first spirit photographer. He grew wealthy producing spirit photos for grief-stricken clients who had lost relatives in the Civil War. Ironically it was not him who originally insisted that the image was real, but others. Instead he just decided to go along with others said and made himself rich in the process.

This was basically a very early form of double exposure. which myself is something that ive experimented in with my work.

Armistice day spirit hoax

Ada Emma Deane spent most of her life working as a cleaning lady before launching a new career as a photographic medium at the age of 58. She quickly became one of the most famous mediums in Britain. Her signature effect was that eerie, disembodied heads would appear in pictures taken by her. These heads, so it was claimed, were the manifestation of departed spiritsDeane's most famous photos were those she took, with the help of spiritualist Estelle Stead, during the two minutes silence at services commemorating Armistice Day and the end of World War I. In these photos ghostly figures and faces — supposedly the spirits of dead war heroes — could be seen floating above the crowd. The photos of armistice day became famous and widely anticipated to the point where news papers out bid each other for the rights to print. But two days later The Daily Sketch paper, announced it had discovered the photo to be a fraud. The faces in the cloud were not dead war heroes. Instead, they appeared to be living football players and boxers. The paper published portraits of the athletes alongside Deane's spirit photo.Below are two different Armistice day images taken by Ade Deane

The Brown Lady

This is one of the most famous ghost photos of all time. It supposedly shows the "Brown Lady" who haunts Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. The image was taken by Captain Provand and Indre Shira (a pseudonym), two photographers on assignment for Country Life magazine. According to their later testimony, the pair saw an ethereal form descending the staircase and quickly snapped a picture. Skeptics argue that the photo does not show a ghost, but rather was the result of mundane causes such as camera vibration, afternoon light from the window above the stairs catching the lens of the camera, and double exposure. What is not known is whether these effects were produced purposefully, or if they were the accidental result of a faulty camera.