Venice Biennale 2011

I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Venice Biennale last week. Saw lots of amazing art, but definitely thought the Gardini was better than the Arsenale. Found lots of inspiration, but right now I'm keeping all those ideas until second semester, and getting my head down to get my final photographs done for our assessment in 6 weeks (eek!).

For me, the two highlights were Christian Boltanski's "Chance", which can be watched here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47o10W_ltVc , and Mike Nelson, who represented Britain;

....And some photographs from my adventures! In no particular order;

Roland Barthes, 'Camera Lucida'

"It is said that mourning, by its gradual labor, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot beleive this; because for me, Time eliminates the emotion of loss (I do not weep), that is all. For the rest, everything has remained motionless. For what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indespensible, but the irreplaceable. I could live without the Mother (as we all do, sooner or later) ; but what life remained would be absolutely and entirely unqualifable (without quality)."

Third Year, Week Four

Over the past two weeks I've spent time at home and in Dundee photographing family members around my Grans house using my 5 x 4 Large format camera. I'll be continuing to do so over the semester with looking to have some more finalised images by Christmas. All films are Ilford HP5+, contact printed on Jessops B&W paper (Yes, i know its fogged a little!)...

Max Kondola speaking of his father's death.

"I could do nothing at all; all my emotions had been drained and were focused on my father's health. I could not get up and help, or calm her; I wanted the same for my father, but for him to life forever. Looking into my father's eyes, I could tell he knew what I was thinking."

"The need to get closer intensifies, to go beneath the skin, back to a state of belonging that is being slowly but inexorably denied. The skin, the hair the tone of the whole mass will be imprinted indefinitely in my memory. His eyes fixed towards the camera lens go beyond, into death, even further, into a place that I do not know."

"When I look deep within the photographs, death is so close, so close that I can almost small, feel and touch it."

"Death is 'the smile of unknowingness', it arrives, and the conclusion is that of a dream, time disappears, and a void appears, vivid images take over and are translated and embedded within. Seconds are hours and days, time becomes static and the illusion of the present in which our sponge-filled memory begins to conclude and become rational with something that time has already disposed of."

"Death has an impossible beauty, even in decay."

Third year, Week two

Been busy in the dark room enlarging from the films I shot over the summer this week;



I shot lots of 5x4 this week end, which I'll be working with over the next week. I'm really pleased with how their looking (the negatives) so hopefully I'll get some successful prints from them. They're the best 5x4 I've shot since I got my large format camera, so fingers crossed.

3rd Year, Week One.

First week back at uni, and I promise to update this more regularly from now on, hopefully on a weekly basis.


My Gran died over the summer, and I documented the loss from the early stages of her dementia, right through to visiting her body at the undertakers and the funeral. The photographs I took will be the basis for a series of self portraits, exploring the idea of immortality, and that she lives on in all those who knew her. The second image was taken a few hours before she died.

Untitled

Right now, I am feeling completely lost in the work I am producing, but definately not in a good way. I've moved away from photography and trying to work with desintegrating photographic etching plates but I just cannot relate to what I am working with. I do not have any passion to watch some image I took digitally, poorly applied to an etching plate, disintegrate. I need to get back into the dark room, as soon as possible. I think for my subject matter (the traces that my Grandmother leaves behind) I need to produce work in a way I like. She is my Grandmother, and ultimately she will not be around for much longer. Obviously, I care about her, and I think that should be reflective in the work I am producing, but I dont think I am ready to "move on" to unfamiliar territory just yet; I am not finished in what I am doing.

I am in the middle of watching "What Remains" on youtube, a documentary about Sally Mann, and she is just at the point of describing how she documented the loss of her dog, by photographing the skin, bones, etc. Now I feel like I have some sort of need to document the things I have collected from my Grandmothers house (which all show traces of her life) in a similar way, and blow them up large. I still have some 16 x 20 paper which I can experiment with. I'll collect all my cameras and films together tonight and hopefully get started tomorrow morning.