Essay

Investigation into the effects of age by the medium of photography

Introduction:

We change so much as we age, from being age 7, to age 70. Sometimes we aren't even recognisable ten years later. It is a very interesting subject and mediation tends to form one sided representation, a majority of TV surrounds young adults and middle aged people, rather than elderly people and children. For example, Glee, Friends, and Eastenders. All three of these TV shows are very popular, however they all show a limited amount of diversity.

In Glee, a majority of the characters are young adults from ages 16-25, however, they are almost all played by adults in their mid 20s, even the younger characters. This is an example of low diversity. Although there are older characters in the show, they aren’t main characters and they don’t appear very often in the show.

Also, in Friends, almost all of the characters are young adults with a few middle aged people as well. All of the main characters are in their early twenties when the show starts and their early thirties when it ends. The show isn’t very diverse, other than one of the main characters having a child, there really isn’t very many young children in the show. This show is one of the most popular TV shows in American media, and it doesn’t show much diversity, in both age and in race.

Eastenders is another example of this, however it does a bit better than some of the other examples, it does tend to show mostly adults from about ages 25 - 55. There are quite a few elderly people, although it is definitely a lot less. Furthermore, there are even less children on the eastenders show. 

I would like to take photographs of a variety of ages, so that I can show a more diverse range of people. However I may like to focus on a particular age group later in the investigation when I have seen which shoots work best, I may focus on youth as I think that there are more subjects that I can use, so the photographs will have a wider range of subjects.

History and Contextual Study:

History of photography:

Photography began with the pinhole camera, this type of photography goes as far back as the 900's. This camera doesn't have a lens, but instead a very small aperture. It is effectively a light proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through an aperture and projects a photograph on the wall, this is known as the camera obscure effect. 

In 1614, Angelo Sala demonstrated that powdered silver nitrate is blackened by the sun, along with the paper that is wrapped around it. However, when it came to viewing it was difficult to stop the whole page from going black as it was shown in sunlight. 

The first permanent form of photography was invented in the 1820's, although it was very crude. This photograph is from 1826 and was taken by Nicéphore Niépce. Several days of exposure in the camera were required, it was commercially introduced in 1839. The metal based daguerreotype process soon had some competition from paper based calotype negative and salt print processes.

During the first decade of the 21st century, traditional film-based photochemical methods were increasingly marginalised as the practical advantages of the new technology became widely appreciated.

History of portraiture:

Portraiture dates back to the ancient Egyptian age. In the past they were almost always flattering photographs, artists that didn't make flattering portraits tended to find their work rejected.

In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, portraits had a much longer exposure time than they do now, this means that a majority of portraits were taken in deadpan because it was difficult to keep the same expression for minutes at a time, and especially because the photos cost so much to get developed.

Advances in photographic equipment gave photographers the ability to capture images with shorter exposure times and the making of portraits outside the studio.

In recent years, a lot more photographs are taken that are unflattering, as we want to show the reality of humans.

Photographers research:
Julia Margaret Cameron was a photographer during the 19th century, she took unorthodox portraits for the time, she took a lot of photographs with heroic themes and using a soft focus. She intentionally left her camera out of focus, however the photographs also looked like that because of the long exposure times, it was difficult for subjects to keep still.

This photograph portrays innocence as she is a child wearing angel wings, Margaret Cameron saw photography as an art form when many didn't and she was heavily inspired by traditional art. We can see this from the way she poses and dresses her subjects.

The subjects expression is very deadpan although it is also quite a bored expression, this is likely because of the long exposure times they had to sit through, it may have been up to 5 minutes sometimes. In addition to the wings she is wearing, she also has very volumised hair, it almost looks like wind is being blown into her hair.

This photograph is very Arthurian, the clothing the woman is wearing reminds me of a stage show, it definitely looks older than 1800's clothing. The pose doesn't look very comfortable for someone to have to stay in for up to 5 minutes, this is why the focus was so soft, if it was very hard focus then the slight movements would be a lot more noticeable. The majority of the movement is more from the right arm, rather than the left arm which is surprising as she is leaning on the left arm.

Rineke Dijkstra is a photographer that took photographs in the 1990's of teenagers at the beach. The portraits were taken with a low horizon to make the subjects look larger. They also have quite cold lighting in them, she didn't edit the photographs to make them seem warmer, they are very blue. 

This photograph by Dijkstra is of a girl at the beach, she is posed in a position that is heavily inspired by the artwork called The Birth of Venus, the way she is standing with one leg relaxed and her shoulders rolled forward like that is meant to show gracefulness, however in this photograph it just looks uncomfortable. The tan lines on her arms and the messy hair show her imperfections. As well as the sand on her feet which shows that its not as perfect as it is made out to be in the artwork. 

The way the light is hitting the model makes her look a lot brighter than the dark and quite murky looking background, this shows quite a lot of contrast, she is being portrayed as innocent and good, due to the colour of her swimming costume, it looks like she is producing light.

 This photograph isn't very natural looking, the girl is standing with her arms straight at her side, this isn't a natural position for someone to stand in. I think either she has been told to pose like that, or that she feels awkward from having her photograph taken so she is standing very robotically. She is probably only about 13 years old and many 13 year olds don't feel comfortable about how they look so she may be trying to hide the way she looks from the camera. The photographer uses very plain backgrounds for her photographs, there isn't any other people to get distracted by, so no matter how much the girl might hate it, she is going to be looked at as there is so much focus on her and only her.

My Photography:

This photograph is inspired by Rineke Djikstra, this photograph was taken in a similar style as the subject is deadpan like the models in Rineke's photographs. We also both have a similar style in terms of the background, my background is quite plain like hers, although her photograph wasn't taken in the studio, it was taken outdoors at the beach. Another way that this is similar is the facial expression, the model is deadpan like Djikstra's models, this is so that the viewer can see their own emotion on the model, rather than trying to read into what the model is actually feeling. Rineke Djikstra also used this and none of her models are showing much emotion, however this might be because her subjects feel uncomfortable.

This is another photograph inspired by Djikstra. My photograph isn't a full body shot like hers, but this photograph was taken outside in London so the lighting used was natural light. Furthermore, it is quite dark lighting like she uses, the background is quite dark in her photographs and mine is as well. Her full body shots show the body language of the model better, however for my shoot this wasn't important as I wanted to focus on the facial features more so I did a head and shoulders portrait instead. This portrait was also slightly inspired by Thomas Ruff because of his use of deadpan and the portrait size, the images he took were also just head and shoulders.

The Future:

Portraiture as a form of photography is going to change in the future and is changing right now. In recent years, mobile phones have had cameras on them, at first they only had cameras on the back so it was easy to take photographs of other people very quickly, whereas with actual cameras, you would have to change the settings on it to take a good photograph, with a mobile phone you can take photographs that might not be as high quality as the camera, but are still pretty good, in just one click. Then, more recently we have had cameras on the front, so self portraits are very easy to take now. 

Furthermore, we now have apps like Instagram and Snapchat dedicated to photographs and photography, on snapchat, you can put filters on your photographs that edit the way it looks and add text to a photograph. In previous years, if you wanted to do this sort of thing you would have to edit the photographs on photoshop, which can be quite a laborious process.

Conclusion:

To conclude, I think that I would like to carry on focusing on portraits, however I want to just focus on youth portraiture. I really like my deadpan shoots and I want to carry on taking those photographs as I think that they look really good. I want to bring some of the focus to the background of the photograph rather than the subject of the image because my studio portraits turned out so well, I really like this style of portraiture and I think location shoots would bring the focus away from the subject and make the photograph more interesting as it  can tell us a lot about the subject of a image, especially if the subject has something to do with the background, like a school for example. 

Bibliography:

Daniel, M (2004), Julia Margaret Cameron [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm]

Date accessed: 10/11/2016

Woodward, D (2015), Why Julia Margaret Cameron is Photography's Secret Heroine [http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7823/why-julia-margaret-cameron-is-photographys-secret-heroine]

Date accessed: 10/11/2016

Manchester, E (2005) [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dijkstra-kolobrzeg-poland-july-26-1992-p78330]

Date accessed: 10/11/2016