Thursday, February 26, 2015

forward thinking

I have learned a lot while making photo weaving these past couple of weeks and I have not gotten tired of doing it yet, which for me is saying something. There have been times when I have started a project and get tired of doing it after a couple of weeks. I have not felt this way about photo weaving at all, and I am interested in making works like this for the months to come.
I have a vision for my final BFA show and it goes something like this: huge (17x22 or bigger) photo weaving hanging off the wall the same way a woven blanket would be presented. I would like to present photo weavings of people as well as architecture and other aspects of Earth and how Earth relates to people.
At the moment, however, I feel I need to focus on perfecting a technique that works for me in order to create the best photo weavings possible. I have tried multiple techniques and ways of weaving photographs together in the past couple of weeks. For example, I have tried cutting horizonal and vertical lines in my first photograph and then weaving in from the bottom or the side. I have learned that I prefer cutting horizontal lines first. I hope my preferred way translates well when I start working with bigger photographs.


I recently did my first portrait weaving with pictures of my brother. I did not shoot the portraits in a studio so the lighting was not what I preferred, but I was just shooting them to test out how they would look when weaved together. While I could have done a better job with the weaving, I do like how I got the general idea of what it will look like. I will not include text in portraits I shoot from now on because of how big of a distraction text is, and I will play with shadows more, too.
 I used very small sections when weaving these two portraits together to try to get the both of them to show better. After completing this photo weaving I learned that the back image shows more than the one that I cut up. I will see if this continues to happen in future weavings. I also learned that weaving two complex photographs might not work well because too much is going on when the two photos are combined.
 I want to explore weavings that did not feature faces of people, too, so I tried weaving two photographs taken one right after the other of two figures walking up a hill. I would like to experiment with different sizes of sections to see how I can enhance the effect of time, disappearing, change, among other themes in my work from now on.

I recently started working on weaving together two portraits I took of myself print 13x19:


I hope the bigger size of the paper and the simplicity of the background makes both images move visible once I am done weaving them together. I anticipate that my shirt and necklace will be a bit distracting, so in the future I am going to try to get portraits that solely focus on the face.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

progress

The more I do and research photo weaving, the more I an intrigued by the mystery of merging two photographs together, as well as how the two images change. Themes of disappearing, loosing a sense of self or a sense of what a photograph used to be, and new meaning to a photograph come to mind the more I look at and explore weaving photographs together. I like the ideas of dissolving and changing meaning by meshing two photos together. I will explore putting photographs of people together more, as well as merging landscapes together with people as well. I think I need to choose carefully what I put together in order to create a certain meaning I have in mind.

I came across this site while doing more research, and find the concept to be interesting: http://christykovacs.blogspot.com/2010/12/photographic-weaving-process.html

 Greg Sand

 Greg Sand

 Greg Sand

These images have equal pieces of photograph weaved together, I think it would be interesting to see the effect of different sized pieces. I find the last image to be particularly interesting because of how prominent the landscape and the face are while still working together to create new meaning for both of the images.

david samuel stern: Charles Tang, Artist - "These images are the result of physically weaving together two photographic prints of the same subject. They are an attempt to bridge dignified, direct portraits with a sort of abstraction that allows their subjects to hide within themselves, and the photographs to be distinctly physical objects. In hiding some things, we reveal others."

http://davidsamuelstern.com/wovenportraits/

I researched some more and came across David Samuel Stern's woven portraits. I think this way of weaving portraits together is interesting and is something I will explore in the future as well.
I have been focused on photo weaving more than embroidery on photographs lately, but I do not want to dismiss embroidery on photographs all together. I still want to find a way to incorporate the idea in some or all of my works.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

more thinking

The more I research photo weaving and embroidery in photographs the more I become interested in the practice and idea. I am enjoying exploring these two ways of manipulating photographs to change or add meaning to a photograph.
 http://knithacker.com/2011/08/23/awesome-paper-weaving/

 http://artfueled.com/2013/11/11/photo-weaving-lesson/

The image of the face and the lion is interesting to me, and it inspired me to make a mix of my face and my sisters face. I would like to create more mixes of faces, and want to explore meshing more photographs together as well.



I decided to weave together just the face because I wanted to focus only on facial features. However, I feel that next time I will try weaving together the whole image. While it was intentional, it still feels unfinished to me.



For this image I took a photo of this rock trail and then took another picture of a figure sitting down looking at it. Then, I weaved the figure into the background image. I feel like the figure it not easily recognizable, so I need to work on a way to make it look more like a human and less like just weaving in to the background photograph.

I have spent a lot of time working on and experimenting with photo weaving because I have not done it before, and I would like to work on ways to incorporate weaving and embroidery in to photographs.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

research cont

After looking at embroidery on photographs I feel I want to go more in this direction of manipulating my own photographs. I feel that the 3d aesthetic to the images is something I am interested in because it adds a whole new element to a photography, and can add even greater meaning to the image.

I was first inspired by Maurizio Anzeri. I don't particularly want to use found photographs for my project, but I do find his use of line and the shapes he uses to be interesting.

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/maurizio_anzeri.htm?section_name=new_britannia

Nicola  Maurizio Anzeri
I will be with you the night of your wedding Maurizio Anzeri



I'm more interested in how Gintare Pasakarnyte incorporates embroidery on photographs because her images are more modern, and are more closely related to what I am envisioning for my project.

http://textileartscenter.com/blog/autobiographical-embroidery/

 Gintare Pasakarynte

 Gintare Pasakarynte

 Rebecca Chew

 Rebecca Chew

http://www.honeyinatree.com/2013/05/embroidering-on-photographs/

I fancied leaving that yellow thread dangling loose - it seemed incomplete without it. Not bad for a 2 hour workshop.

http://www.joseromussi.com/string-figures/kb3tbqr3jhkfr0c01me9verxjr7tyn

https://plate7.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/photo-inspiration-photo-embroidery/

project proposal

While looking through my previous work I see a common idea of meshing photos together. I like to shoot people and places, such as a person’s environment and what they like to do. Then, I like to use what I have learned to represent them in a new way. For a final project in a previous class, I shot double exposures of nature and portraits on 120mm film. I enjoyed shooting and making prints for the project quite a bit, and have always liked the idea of putting two pictures on top of each other to create new meanings for both of the photographs. I continued this idea of layering photographs when I made a cyanotypes featuring a human figure and photographs of mountains cut up and layered on top of each other to create a new meaning for both of the photos. I feel that creating photos like this has strengthened ideas and creations with fine art photography.
This semester, I would like to learn lighting studio techniques on how to shoot successful, stunning portraits and still lifes. I would like to explore how manipulating a photograph changes the meaning of the content. I enjoy photographing objects and spaces, as well as portraits, of people to truly convey their lifestyle, hobbies, and what they enjoy to do, and I would like to do that for my project. However, I would also like to take it one step further and see how manipulating a photo, on the 2d and 3d levels, can change the meaning of a photograph even further. There are numerous ways of painting and drawing, and each specific style of painting or drawing can convey meaning in different ways. I would like to explore digital and 3d manipulation of photographs in order to convey meaning in the content of the photograph. I feel that my past work has lead me to this idea, and I will enjoy making and changing meanings of photographs.

Timeline:
February 16, Critique 1:
  • Have completely finalized, clear direction for project
  • Continue thinking about how manipulating of photographs can change meaning
March 9, Critique 2:
  • Have 5-12 final images for the project shot
  • Start working on manipulating the photographs with digitally and on the surface
March 30, Critique 3:
  • Have 12-18 of final photographs shot
  • Have at least 10 of final works manipulated on the surface as well as digitally
May 4, Final Critique:

  • Have all 20 images finalized through manipulation