For my Final Major Project, I wanted to work more with analogue photography and experiment in the darkroom as I am more digitally based. I researched different photographers on Pinterest and found some interesting work that focused mainly on long exposure. I decided that I wanted to concentrate on movement, using long exposure as my medium. I decided to look at femininity and how it is stereotypically and realistically portrayed and capture this through photography. I came across photographers likes Elena Oganesyan who I found would be particularly influential as well as other photographers like Taida Celi and Miroslav Tichy. I found artists whose work were quite haunting and ghostly like Nico Nordström and Kim Kim and found interesting to incorporate.
I went onto producing work with 35mm and 120 film, photographing my friend’s movement with different format film. My friend’s had practiced ballet when they were younger, so this was an interesting concept to introduce into my work and photograph them whilst they created ballet poises. I tried more abstract ways of photographing my friends so that the negatives would be more interesting; thus working with different methods like moving the camera and changing the angles. I went onto processing the negatives and then developing them into positive images in the darkroom.
I started to experiment more in the darkroom, using different materials and methods to produce more contemporary, creative pieces. I scratched into the negative film as well as applied different materials like masking tape and thread on top of it to produce more distorted and textured imagery. I applied water to the paper to form ripples on the photos and moved the paper in a variety of ways to form different effects and motions.
I decided to show the artistic process of my work in my images as well as marks and fingerprints to show the craft of my photographs. I found that a lot of work wasn’t visually strong as they were more experimental so only a small quantity were part of my final project. I scanned my images in as I wanted to try and change the colour to make them more vibrant like Elena Oganesyan and Taida Celi’s work. I found that this development worked well and the different colours created very interesting compositions however, they weren’t as strong as my original photographs.
After developing the photographs, my tutors suggested creating moving image pieces to develop my work, so I produced two moving images using Adobe Premiere Pro. I found that going down this route and using a different medium made my project stronger and more powerful. I feel that it is a creative tool that has helped to develop and strengthen my project.
I was initially heading down the route of just producing photographs that were inspired by photographers like Elena Oganesyan and creating a collection of images to hang up on the wall for the exhibit. However, I needed up producing moving images with these photographs which I find is much stronger and has developed my work a lot more. Even though it didn’t meet my original intentions, I feel that it is much more improved and visually stronger than my original goal.
Overall, I feel that this project has gone well and even though it hasn’t gone in the direction it was initially intended on going in, my work has become a lot stronger because of it. I have found that the images produced is what I wanted them to look like in the end which I
am happy about, however I did wish that some of the images were in colour like photographer Elena Oganesyan had done with her photographs. I feel that colour may have made my images more striking and bold. When experimenting on Photoshop the images I changed from black and white to colour looked very vibrant and lucid which I found fit my project and incorporated some of Oganesyan’s style into it. I found I was getting somewhere with my images when changing the hue however, they weren’t as strong as the originals. Apart from that, I found that this project overall has been a success and has come out better than expected; especially with the moving image piece which I find has made my project even more powerful and creative. Finally, I feel I have develop my skills more and expanded my knowledge on analogue photography which was one of the initial aims of this project, and whilst doing that I have created experimental pieces and developed them in moving images.
chloeoliverfmp 