five 'o.

The five images to start with. I like unevenness of having an image in the middle that does not have a pair. From the five photos above, I have only truly decided on the three middle ones. The two on each end are not necessarily the strongest ones so I'm still planning to review this before making a decision. 

The images tell a story within a poem, which I'm going to add as soon as the final photos are picked. Something I didn't really cover previously is just what I want from my series visually. Mind you, this might come across as rather artificial but I want to bring texture into my images through adding text with a pen (and maybe some paint). I realise this is risky because if I get something wrong, it's the print ruined, but perhaps quite stupidly that's what I want from the outcome. I want it to seem rough, like a note to myself. In the editing process for which I've used Lightroom I have played around with the tone curve and content of red, green and blue within the images, but most importantly I have added a small amount of grain.

Recently it's become an unusually controversial thing to add grain. Some say it's defying the whole point of it being digital. Some say it's overused, unnecessary, pointless. Some say it ruins the image.

And that's fair but the reason I add grain is because I am so sensitive to whether there is or isn't any. The grain reminds me of when I used to mix paint with spoons of sand to create a textured painting like Anselm Kiefer or Gerhard Richter. To me this digital grain is that little bit of sand, that small amount of dirt that makes the photo imperfect and flawed, and thereby touchable. This might just be me babbling nonsense but I am simply a fan of adding that pinch of texture.

And like I wanted to at the beginning, I have decided to crop the images in a different aspect ratio - 9:16. I still plan to mount them on a foam board, although I did initially consider using clips (this might be a useless excuse but all my lovely rode gold clips are packed away in the bottom box of the storage place where all my stuff is whilst in the process of moving.. so unless I can miraculously get a hold of them, it seems I'll have to stick with the good old board).

with a heavy heart.

I am obsessed with the way this description of a human centrifuge has been written. I find it so easy to feel the words:

it’s hard to explain exactly how it feels inside a human centrifuge. you sit in a small egg-like pod about the size of a horse which hangs off a 50 foot steel horizontal frame. It looks like something out of a bond villain’s lair. it’s claustrophobic and uncomfortable and also incredibly hot.

slowly the whole thing starts to rotate like a helicopter blade. Faster and faster until every part of you becomes crushed under the extreme gravity. its like being slowly sat on by an elephant, or like your whole body being punched in slow motion. you have to flex every muscle and use every ounce of strength you have to keep going. breathing requires serious effort. movement becomes incredibly strained and almost painful. everything that once weighed 5 kilograms now weighs 50. its difficult even to keep your eyes open. it hurts in places you really didn’t know existed. veins and capillaries burst under the pressure and bruising begins. its a rapid physical overdrive.

the blood rushes from your brain making it impossible to think rationally or focus. your eyes are also drained and you get tunnel vision…only able to see small circles of the world directly in front of you and your sight goes completely greyscale…no more colour. your balance and spatial awareness goes and the world begins to spin like you’ve had way too much to drink. but the most striking thing is the way that the machine pulls on your heart. you can actually feel it struggling to beat and changing shape…flattening inside of your chest. Its similar to that horrible sinking, tugging heartache that comes only with complete and overwhelming sadness. and then you pass out.

we ran the centrifuge 18 times while i tried to sing along to a song which i find difficult to listen to at the best of times.

This is my current inspiration. At the start of this project I really wanted to explore lightness, softness, bliss and the unconscious but I soon realised that it was just something too much in my comfort zone. My visual poems always tend to lean towards the common sense of beauty. However, reading this I realised that the being human is also about a sense of sickness, a pain in fact inflicted by something beautiful.

a mirror of our own.

I was very upset because I couldn't think of a journey my images could portray, nor did I know what I wanted to achieve. Apparently my first idea was discomfort and so I pushed myself to come up with a list of visual changes I could use in my work which was my first mistake because that's what got me stuck.

It was only after Avery told me to spend some time consuming art did I find something that I was actually excited to try. I had bought those little triangle mirrors at the very start of January because their shape really stood out in a music video by Garrett Borns but I pushed this idea away because I felt it wasn't good enough to create a journey. But soon enough I also found this photograph by Erik Johansson called Impact (2016) and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do. The photograph is surreal but warm, and it focuses on the man standing in the middle of the image but because there's so much going on in the image, it almost takes the attention away from him. That's what stood out for me.

As a starting point, I carried my little mirrors with me everywhere, waiting for the perfect moment to shoot. Because I had been stuck for so long, I was suggested to think of the written part before I tried to do the photographs but I found that as soon as I took the first image, the text started forming in my head and helped me find a narrative. After that, I found it easy to just keep going.

I had a lot of fun using the mirrors because, as I found out, there were a lot of different things I could do with them. One of the most fun is actually this image below. It was difficult to take because even the smallest movement would ruin the alignment of the lens info and the eye but it remains one of my favourites simply to me this was the point where I started enjoying what I was doing.

From there on out the series formed themselves and I was left with the difficult task of combining images and merging them with text, although thankfully I already knew what I wanted from them. My other favourite was the fact that without a camera - without getting very close to the mirrors and having the right depth of field, all that could be seen was the shape of mirrors and not the portraits of the people.

three contemplations.

the three contemplations:

the echo repeats itself
in the quiet ambience of the house,

don't feed the wolves, they said,

but they are my thoughts and

i don't really want to starve because i

am already empty everywhere else.

the complexion fades per day and that

is all you see, oh darling,

in life nothing is but complex shards

of sobs in a cold stranger's kitchen

and walking miles to go in circles.

i will smile for you,

and they will smile for me,

and we will all smile

and sip on that tea for the wolves.

For the past few weeks I felt what I could only describe as a photographer's block. I had so many ideas but none of them seemed good. I didn't want to create anything at all. I had an idea to ask people about what was the reason for when they last cried (hence previous edited photos with blue shapes) because I kept writing poems about sadness. Then I wanted close ups - to get really close and personal. I also wanted two people within an image and to get them into each other's spaces. 

But the reality is that I simply cannot create for the sake of creating. I know, I know, it's probably a silly thing to say. Surely as a photographer you learn to just create what you need to create.

Well.. I honestly don't think I can. I don't think I can create a deep, researched background for my photos before I take them. That was my issue this time around - I wanted to make something absolutely amazing, something I had previously never done. It's quite funny, really, because I didn't realise just how much I was forcing myself to do something I didn't really want to until Leah told me to stop and think before I just 'did things differently for the sake of doing something I don't usually do'. 

Truth is I'm quite an awful photographer. Sometimes I simply cannot create. Most of the time I hate what I make, and the rest of the time I don't even try because it upsets me so much.

And then other times it just clicks. Like with the photos above of Jack and Morgan on the stairs. It was 8am, and the fresh snow covered the ground. The house was quiet but everyone was beaming with excitement, despite our usual mood of anxiety and stress. 

Or the photo where I just dropped some mirrors on a table in a cafe and snapped a shot of Jack's reflection in them alongside a little bottle of milk. (I was too shy to ask the barista but I felt really happy and decided I want to take a collection of photos of coffee shop baristas)

Honestly I'm not too sure what I'm trying to say with all this except that I was very confused and frustrated, and now I'm not. In fact I realised I really liked the image of the mirrors because it sort of touched upon the idea of fragments of a person's face so I've decided to pursue this style. 

the journey to mount fuji.

The beginning: Hokusai

Hokusai developed late as an artist and started the series at the age of 70, drawing, printing and cutting wood blocks for publishers and other artists prior to that. At the age of seventy-five he said about himself: “I have drawn things since I was six. All that I made before the age of sixty-five is not worth counting. At seventy-three I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. At ninety I will enter into the secret of things. At a hundred I shall certainly have reached a magnificent level; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything-every dot, every dash — will live.”

Thirty-six View of Mount Fuji strikes the viewer with its diversity of compositions and scenes that seem never to repeat each other. The series includes close-up views of the sacred mountain where it appears alone in its majesty depicted throughout the seasons and weather conditions; as well as distant (and very distant) views where it rather serves as a constant for every-day life scenes.

The middle: Wall

After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999-2000 

Wall describes his work as “cinematographic” re-creations of everyday moments he has witnessed, but did not photograph at the time. “To not photograph,” he says, “gives a certain freedom to then re-create or reshape what I saw.” [..] In his new show, you will search in vain for anything as spectacularly hyperreal as A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai)1993, a huge digital collage in which four figures in a landscape respond to a sudden squall that bends trees and scatters a sheaf of papers though the air. Today, most of his images resemble reportage and, as such, are likely to incense his detractors, who claim he’s not a “true” photographer.

The approach: The World Spins, The Convenience Store, Welcome to Night Vale, Paterson

I find it hard to visualise a soundscape without a story holding it up, hence why my main goal straight after choosing an image was to come up with a visual journey that I could then imagine within sound. Thankfully I came across a film called Paterson by Jim Jarmusch that really helped me find a solid starting point. This film is about a bus driver in a town called Paterson (his name is also Paterson) who has a passion for poetry. This film is lovely because it isn't based around dialogues and instead focuses on either listening to the speech of others, or talking to oneself. 

Anyhow, I found the journey of the film to be the fuel to make the wheels start turning within my head. I started at the beginning - the original piece of art done by Hokusai that focused on different views of Mount Fuji and based it on this location (more so in an abstract way - I decided this would be the perfect place of inspiration my person would go to to feel peaceful). As both the painting and the photograph focus so much on the aftermath of this gust of wind, I thought it would be nice to actually think about what happened before hand. 

I spent a lot of time just focusing on listening. The very top video is a piece of soundtrack from the original Twin Peaks that perfectly portrays the feelings of sadness, loss and ending, at least in my mind. It's peaceful but strong, something that really pulls at you but quietly so.

On the other hand, the second soundscape is drastically different. It's chaotic, loud and piercing; it's an interrupted story - almost as if it was broken and then glued back together. It's very unpleasant to listen to but it pushes further what we see visually.

Then lastly I thought I'd add something completely unrelated but fascinating - a podcast that focuses on a radio show in a fictional place. This made me realise just how much small details of description and noise can do to establish a mental image of what something looks like when there is no imagery to base this view on.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

[1]  Kira Sidorova (2010) Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji from the Met for your enjoyment. 

At: http://www.galleryintell.com/thirty-six-views-mount-fuji/(Accessed on 14/2/18)

[2]  Sean O'Hagan (2015) Jeff Wall: 'I'm haunted by the idea that my photography was all a big mistake'. At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/03/jeff-wall-photography-marian-goodman-gallery-show (Accessed on 16/2/18)

windy.

The spontaneous is the most beautiful thing that can appear in a picture, but nothing in art appears less spontaneous than that.

I decided to go against what felt right. Out of all the images we were offered, I decided to purposefully choose the one that I liked visually but knew would have trouble conceptualising.

The other images were very packed with almost explosive visual sounds but A Sudden Gust of Wind really spoke to me in its style - faint, blush, pastel colours, the idea of a painted event becoming reality, the film-likeness of it, the seeming possibility of a single person being in multiple places, thereby creating a movement within a still. I could imagine the quiet breeze and softness of sound it could bring. It was a contrast to the intensity of the other paintings.

Ejiri in Suruga Province was one of Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

I like the thought behind Jeff Wall's image. It's a recreation, it's a beautiful serendipity but it's fully staged. It's sort of like a copy. It was a real moment turned into a drawing that then got recreated and frozen in time through an image. 

First notes:

sounds of paper,

whistle and chimes moving in wind, 

river and flow of water

To me wind and rain are escape, paper is creation and water is meditation. 

Recently I watched Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. It's a film about a bus driver who is also a poet. He starts his day writing, then listens to people chat on the bus, and then at lunch he goes to his favourite place - a waterfall - and keeps writing. 

For some reason that's exactly what I envision in this photograph. A journey in writing, if that makes sense. I realise it might be a strange approach but I've created a story that I want to create the soundscape for. I know what I want visually, so now I need to produce that within sound.

squares.

last night i cried over
the pain within us

created by the endless

youth and naivety

us and [sr].

< when i was twelve
i had to choose between german and russian
my dad told me to do russian because then he could help me with the homework

i was confused as to why he knew the language so well
but when he was a child, russian was our country's language

see, my sister was born in 1990,

a year after the baltic chain of freedom

but a year before the fall of ussr.

she was born in soviet union

and i was born in latvia,

only a seven year difference.

i was born in a free country

childishly i was unaware

that nothing in life is as easy as it seems, and that when i grow up
hearing latvian on a street would become almost unusual.

most of my friends fell in love with travelling,

they moved, and so did i,

and what's left now is the generation who fought for our freedom

left to watch it disappear. >

greens.

the shoot above.

In the previous post I mentioned that my mind was filled with countless ideas of the style I wanted my portraiture to explore. Perhaps unsurprisingly I found myself so overwhelmed by the stylistic ideas that I felt like I had some sort of a photographer's block - I felt like I couldn't take any photos until I figured out a meaning or a journey. It was almost like I refused to try until I had finally developed a final series in my head. To no surprise, that is a very nasty, worrying feeling. 

So I did what I do best and took a train, met up with my friend and just kept snapping images until the battery of the camera died. Whilst I wouldn't say this in any way relates to my previous train of thought, I did try to keep in mind that for these series I wanted to push myself to do something I hadn't previously done. 

And in this scenario that was me directing. Properly so. All of these images are wholly staged, including clothing and make-up. To my own surprise I found it very easy to tell Clio exactly what I wanted from her, something I never thought I'd be comfortable with. 

The last two and the bottom image are my absolute favourites from this shoot. I directed Clio to use her hands and legs as if she was moving to Madeline Follin's Funnel of Love - a feeling of free flow and feather-like lightness. I also tried a low angle - something I never do as I usually aim for shots from above or on the eye level. I found out that it is actually something that I like. On top of that, I really like the use of reflection I had in the first two images so that is definitely something that keeps sneaking into my photography recently, so perhaps I could explore that some more.

In the end, I realised that sometimes a photograph doesn't need a deep, thoughtful meaning - sometimes it creates it for itself after it's been captured. I'm thankful I did this because I finally don't feel stuck. Instead I just want to see what else new I could try.

And not to forget, Lightroom and Photoshop were a big part of why I feel these images are such a success. They were all individually toned and coloured, and I played around with the levels of rgb hue and saturation. Afterwards I added a thin white frame around them in Photoshop.

m.

As the title suggests, I find it very hard to explain what I did in this little video. I had a whole vision of a strange video I wanted to shoot but I've now decided to keep it for later as last week didn't really go as well as I hoped it would. Nevertheless, I filmed some shots and went crazy on Premiere Pro. This includes using warp and twirl distortions, color keying colours that really should've remained untouched, using multiple layers, timelapse and RGB curves on top of two still images and five shots of clouds, Jack under a huge blanket and a close-up of a guitar amp.

A week and a half ago I also decided to go a bit crazy with the live music footage we recorded. Although it started as me just playing with editing tools, I soon realised that I actually quite liked the low, grainy quality of bad color keying and multiple, colourful layers. I might come back to that again.

The video beneath is one I did a very long time ago for a poem that I wrote, however the shots following the one minute fourty four second mark are some of my favourites as they are more abstract and unusual than the rest of the milk/honey/ink visuals. I like textures, both of the subject filmed and the actual digital outcome after editing, so I might bring that into some of the other experimental shorts to follow.

joke's on us.

The plan was simple. I was going to visit my friend and her roommate, and ask them to sit down in front of the camera. Little did I know that I would end up using toilet roll as a tripod and leaving the low-battery camera on for continuous shooting whilst my friend and I pretended to laugh at nothing (because the roommate was feeling too annoyed to accept the offer). And then at some point we actually started laughing (genuinely) and wouldn't stop until about 80 photos later.

So the hardest part was actually choosing images where the two of us didn't look like absolute bums, in disbelief of our bad jokes, and editing them to look somewhat nicely coloured.