Reminds me of..

Whilst thinking more about Text Portraits I started to get reminded of scenes from the Matrix Trilogy. Throughout the film, scenes are often depicted through arrangement of text or symbols. It relates to the whole concept of online and digital data, there are no pictures on the internet, just codes of letters and numbers that tell the computer how to arrange this code into the image we see. I think this plays hand in hand with the whole concept of a text portrait project. Everything you can find in relation to a person can produce their identity just as good as a portrait picture of them.

It leads me on to think about the ease of identity fraud in the digital age we now live in. With all the personal details we give about ourselves to social media, it's easily available and accessible on the internet. A piece by Ueltzhoeffer addresses this link in widespread accessible personal details and the identity of someone.

Textportrait - Textimages "IDENTITY" (2009) by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Zoomed in:

Text Portraits - Ralph Ueltzhoeffer

From the beginning of my project I have developed along the concept or portraits and in particular, wanting to focus around photography. One day whilst researching for ideas and influences one of my classmates discovered a piece of work that looked amazing. I instantly was amazed by it and knew that I had just found my focus for my Art Work. The work was by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer, the producer of one of the first text portraits like the example below.

Ueltzhoeffer, R (2002) David Beckham Portrait. [Digital Image]

The above image uses a story of details of David Beckham, perhaps from a Wikipedia entry, and then uses the text gathered to produce a portrait image of David. The way this is achieved is by the text adjusting colour to change with the contours and details of the subjects face. Here is a collection of other work by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

Ueltzhoeffer, R (2009) Celebrity Portraits. [Digital Images]

As you can see they all follow the same design of relevant text forming a portrait of the celebrity. The whole series of work plays around with the idea of identity and the documents of word that are created around us create who we are: our credit rating, job title, name, place of birth. They all arguably form more of your identity than your own face.

Here is some more information about Ueltzhoeffer's project from his project website, http://text-portrait.ueltzhoeffer.com/about/.

Text portrait – a symbiosis out of text and photo, biography and portrait (PHOTO).

A portrait is a painting, a photo, a sculpture or another artistic display of a person. The intension of a portrait is, next to the display of the physical similarity, is also to express the character, respectively the personality of the portrayed person.
If you now extend the basic requirements of a portrait by the name, the biography, the finger print, an iris scan or the DNA, the portrayed person becomes more and more recognized without a doubt among a multitude of people. Therefore, the society can easily respond the needs of an individual.
A text portrait can start off with the NAME, the BIOGRAPHY or the PHOTO. Only the combination (symbiosis) of the single components form it to a text portrait.

Text portrait – what is that?

A text portrait is a version of lettering and photo of a usual portrait, with the difference, that the text (e.g. biography) and the photo (e.g. passport picture) create an inseparable symbiosis. The fusion of two visually different components to a readable portrait – the text portrait.

References:
Ueltzhoeffer, R (2009) Text Portrait Project. Available at http://text-portrait.ueltzhoeffer.com/about/ [Accessed 18/11/2010]

First Tutorial

After researching through various online sources offering help on portrait photography I started wonder what else I could do with portraits. During our first tutorial as a class we all shared our ideas with each other and then with help from our lecturer started to build a foundation for development.

In the tutorial I explained how I wanted to play with perceptions and the way the viewer looks at the work. I wanted to explore the different ways in which we physically look at it (e.g from different points in the room) and ways in which the context alters our perceptions. I was advised to look at the artist Patrick Hugues who creates pieces of work that rely on lighting and shadows to manipulate the perception of his art. Ranging from use of painting, collage, 3D installations and prints, Patrick has a vast amount of his work displayed on his website.

Hughes, P (2010) The Palace of Alice. [Oil on board construction]

From this piece of his work it can be seen how Patrick makes use of angles, lighting and shadow to create the illusions that you can go into the piece and really explore around it. He has been the subject of a published book titled 'Perverspective'. It describes how Patrick successfully makes the viewers mind animate his pieces to twist and bend to make you feel like you are on some perceptual freak-out.

Hughes, P (2005) All-out Mondrian. [Oil on board construction]

It reminds me of how portrait paintings are said to have eyes that follow you across the room, constantly looking at you. I think portraits are fun to play with because they will create a strange feeling when the perception of a face is changed by the form and creation process. A face is usually a shocking and sometimes eery thing to discover in formations of many natural occurrences.

Steve McCurry Exhibition @ Waterhall Gallery in Birmingham

After deciding to look at doing portrait photography I took advantage of the opportunity to go to the Steve McCurry exhibition at a local gallery, the Waterhall. His exhibition, titled 'Retrospective', features around 80 pieces of his work throughout his career.

  

"His coverage of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980’s, when he crossed the border disguised as a local with rolls of film sown into his clothes, won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad Showing Courage and Enterprise. He has also won numerous awards including the National Press Photographers' Association award, Magazine Photographer of the Year and an unprecedented four first prizes in the World Press Photo contest."

BMAG, (2010), 'Last chance to see 'Steve McCurry - Retrospective' exhibition!' available at http://www.bmag.org.uk/news?id=124 (accessed 08/11/10)

McCurry, S (1984) Afgan Girl [photograph] Retrospective.

A lot of his work has been portrait photography so it was a great chance to see influential pieces from a world renown photography. The above picture, Afgan Girl, is his most famous and led him to the achievement of many awards after it was first featured on the front cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985 (Newman, 2002).

I found the exhibit very motivational and moving. The breadth of work on display shows how a photographer can master photography, most importantly portrait in the case of my project. It's quite inspiring to see the quality in these large reproductions considering how long ago the original photographs were taken. With closer inspection of the pieces it is also interesting to consider that most of them are all captured on film cameras and not digital. I left admiring the work of this exhibition and set me off in motion to try and find a specific area of portrait photography to work in.



Reference List
Newman,C (2002) A life revealed. Available at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text (Accessed 08/11/2010)

The Start

I have decided to do another project within photography because I find the discipline very broad and interesting. There are many specific elements of photography that an artist can practice and master in. Previously, I have never really thought about photographing humans in portrait scope. People may have been part of previous photography as part of the scene but never as a key subject. My previous photography project of HDR photography was largely based on landscapes so although I'm using the same initial tool for my art project, the art which I am crafting will be different.Along the way there will be continuous development of work from a new and strange practice.

I'm looking forward to see what this project develops into to and where I take it.