Photography

Using Photography in my final outcomes: (key point)

Throughout the creation of my sculptures, I kept in mind how the audience would be viewing them. I thought about how to entice the viewer to travel around the sculpture, and how to distort/control their view. Although, there is only so much that I can control when a person can physically approach and view (even touch) a sculpture.

There are many imperfections in my sculptures that I cannot control or remove. I fear that they may ruin the effect of the sculpture.

For example:

^
What I wanted the audience to see
(vibrant, freshly "spilled" blood)

^
What they would actually see,
after the blood has dried/reacted over time.
v

From underneath, you can see that the blood has dried, and you can see the mess of hot glue that is keeping the axe in place.

This ruins the effect of the "floating" axe in her neck, and the realism of dripping blood.

Photography, on the other hand, allows me to completely 100% control what the viewer is seeing.

Images like this one*

*allow me to fully control what the user is seeing, from the correct angle, in the correct lighting, etc etc. The blood appears fresh and realistic, and you cannot travel behind the sculpture to see its imperfections.

Photography would be interesting to incorporate into my work, due to the fact that I can photo edit to my hearts desire to create a piece even more surreal than they are currently, if I wanted to.

Although, I don't think I would go down that route, as I have worked hard to construct this piece to be naturally, physically surreal to the naked eye.

I enjoy the idea that photography leaves many questions, as photographs are "proof" of something's existence, but can also be edited to create something that isn't real at all. I think that this sculpture makes it incredibly difficult to tell whether it is real, or whether it has been photo edited. It creates an ambiguous piece.



Anne Hardy:
I could relate this idea briefly to the work of Anne Hardy, who constructs entire rooms as sculptures, but only displays the photographs. They are surreal pieces that provoke questions as to whether it is real or not, as the room itself was never open in the flesh. No visitors allowed, only displays of photographs from the room.

These rooms are very surreal, and often disorganised, like a chaotic series of paintings. You can imagine that the experience of entering the room would be incredibly different to viewing the image. But the image allows you to see all that the artist wanted you to see, and you can still create your own interpretation of the effect of the room.

I find it interesting how the rooms were never open to the public, so it could have been argued that they never existed, if they weren't immortalised in photography.

I am interested in the idea that cameras never lie (although, photographs can be edited).

I'd like to have a series of images to display my sculptures in the way that I intended them to be, alongside the physical outcomes. 

Such as these images above, which were all temporary moments, that I have now captured.

I also like the idea of using photography, because I can crop them to certain size and hide the fact that it is just a head/just a face.

Originally, I would have liked to work on an entire lifesize, full-body mannequin. Unfortunately I did not have the means to do this, so stuck to the attainable bust mannequins. Photography allows me to construct the small heads in different ways that make them appear large and powerful.

I plan to experiment with lighting and composition in order to create a series of interesting photographs.