PHO702: Coursework – Jasmine Murray Photography

Week 11: Consolidating Practice – A Reflection

Intent

“I think it’s important to ask: Who is making the work, and for whom? Who controls that narrative, and how is that disseminated to the general public?”
Frazier, LT.R. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019; 74-75)

Throughout this module my main intent has been to communicate the notion that social media and photography in general is not “authentic” and that the perfected curated manifestations of the social media feeds are ultimately a lie and to reconsider their consumption and aspiration to unrealistic false realities. I have communicated verbally and in writing these intentions by supporting my practice’s viewpoint by referencing to theorists from a variety of backgrounds e.g Freud’s Uncanny and Relate’s research.

Inform

**Figure 1** Murray, J. (February, 2020) *Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’*

“Pictures inform other pictures, and projects inform other projects. It’s not so linear, and more of a web.”
Edmonds, J. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019; 70)

I have found my practice has been informed through a variety of means. Visually, as mentioned in Practice & Preparation: A Reflection fellow contemporary practitioners, who share similar life experiences in regards to the impact the internet and social media has had on them whilst growing up, have practices which align with some of my own intentions and in some instances we share a similar nostalgia to the customisability lost from the early internet and a disdain to the cookie cutter visual identity of websites today from the visual layout, down to the very content itself. Contextually this has led me to explore and look at 18th century art particularly portraiture by Gainsborough which follow the trajectory of modern visual outcomes on social media, except instead of a face filter (such as those found on Snapchat), the output was a filter by the artist’s hand himself to flatter his sitters. A Christie’s article has even described the period of 18th century portraiture in comparison with today’s addiction to the selfie and write: “As with the selfie today, portraits were also a chance for more self-conscious sitters to be depicted in the latest fashions.” (Van Vliet, M. 2016) Critically I have informed my practice in particular through in-depth research into psycho-analytical theories in particular those who explore and research the Uncanny which I mentioned in-depth on Practice & Preparation: A Post on the Uncanny.

Reflection

**Figure 2** Murray, J. (February, 2020) *Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’*

Thoroughout PHO702 I have used my research to change my path of editing my sequence. Initally, my output used semi-transparent locations, as well as a gradient background from pink to blue behind my couple which contained a hidden message of a twist on traditional gender roles commonly shared on social media. However I quickly discarded this ideas as I felt they convoluted my main intent and in the case of Figure 2 made it far too obvous the figures in my images were dolls.

**Figure 3** Murray, J. (March, 2020) *Is this the real life? (from ‘An Authentic Lie?’)*

By Week 6, I finally produced outcomes, I felt successfully achieved what I had set out to achieve, such as Figure 3 with the figures placed against glitched backgrounds, mostly urban and of London that I had taken back at the start of this module as research. Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus outbreak imposing restrictions I was limited to the photos I had taken for research to glitch, however my final outcomes arguably work better than if I had been able to go to the locations I ha wanted to, as I incorporated and layered into my images archival graffiti photos. This was however after a change in my project to visually include the coronavirus pandemic into my work, and after deciding in Week 8 that my images had become repetitive and in some cases the outcomes themselves were visually weaker than others within my edit, such as Figure 4 which was not particularly dynamic in pose, nore background which was mostly a boring blur of glitched green.

**Figure 4** Murray, J. (March, 2020) *Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’*

The final edit of my work follows a path of comparison between the authentic lie pre-pandemic and currently in the midst of a pandemic through images of the couples paired together.

Professional/Viewing Context

“There are certainly people that I feel a kinship with – but that transcends traditional genres. In general, I find myself uncomfortable with labels, as those often only reinforce a misguided preconception or stereotype about the art. Often classification closes down part of the creative interpretation. I don’t like boundaries. I’d rather let the work speak for itself. Remove the baggage of category, and the photograph deepens and opens up to interpretation.”
Hatleberg, C. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019; 99)

Much like Hatleberg I am not keen on labels or boundaries being placed on my work, and ultimately I like to think my work could be placed in a variety of contexts to be disseminated and viewed. However as my work comments on the virtual world, ultimately the best location of publication is the digital space, which would allow no location or time constraints to visitors, allowing a wider audience to view my work. A webpage would allow a variety of scale and display methods, and would also focus on the temporality of online imagery following the standard social media approach of one long scrolling stream. An alternative option could be a traditional gallery space with images backlit or display via screen to assist the narrative of the digital world, although I could use an empty shop and display in the windows, creating an unmanned exhibition that is visible 24/7. Using a less formal setting would likely attract a more diverse audience outside of the traditional art scene as well as adding connotations to my practice around the changing face of the high street as consumers have migrated to Internet based shopping.

Regardless of format of publication, my main target audience is my generation, to make them critically think about how they consume and use the Internet, and perhaps convince viewers to reconfigure a new reality and realise the darkness of their condition.

References

Figures

Figure 1 Murray, J. (February, 2020) Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’.

Figure 2 Murray, J. (February, 2020) Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’.

Figure 3 Murray, J. (March, 2020) Is this the real life? (from ‘An Authentic Lie?’) [Online] Available from: https://jasmphoto.portfoliobox.net/anauthenticlie [Accessed 23/04/2020]

Figure 4 Murray, J. (February, 2020) Rejected Still ‘An Authentic Lie’.

Bibliography

Edmonds, J. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019) Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice. 1st edition. pg 70. New York; Aperture.

Frazier, LT.R. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019) Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice. 1st edition. pg 70. New York; Aperture.

Hatleberg, C. [in] Wolf, S. (ed) (2019) Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice. 1st edition. pg 70. New York; Aperture.

Van Vliet, M. (2016) Christie’s: Why would you buy a portrait of someone you didn’t know? [Online] Available from: https://www.christies.com/features/18th-century-portraiture-7-key-questions-7225-1.aspx [Accessed 23/04/2020]

Practice & Preparation: A Reflection

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

Reflecting back on the notes I have made, contributions and the feedback I have received about my current practice, has helped me to specifically critical define my position within the area of social commentary and post-internet art, as well as re-evualate what my intentions are, how well my message is being conveyed within my work and question additional meanings within the body of work.

A point of contention this module has been my interpretation of Barthe’s comment:

“In the Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation.”
Barthes, R. (1980; 89)

In week 2 of this module, I stated I don’t believe in authenticity, but I feel it’s relevant to expand on where i stand on representation, recently I’ve been reading from the Photographies Routledge Journal and came across Henning whose comments on digital photographs aligns with my own thoughts. Henning writes:

“For contemporary photography theorists, the problem with paying attention to individual digital photographs is that any single interpretation of an image addresses only the surface manifestation, not the code or the data concealed beneath. The algorithm is increasingly understood as the reality of an image whose visual appearance is no longer its principal or most salient characteristic. The end of the single and singular image seems to announce the irrelevance of approaches that treat the image as representation as well as of practices of close reading.”
Henning, M. (2018; 134)

Whilst I consider representation valid I do agree with Henning that representation is almost close to irrelevance in the viewing of one image alone, as contextually in most cases you need accompanying images (and text), to assist the narrative of representation being depicted within. For example whilst Ingrid Pollard’s series Pastoral Interlude (1988) boosts a very strong message around representation, it lessens if you remove the context of text or other images within the series. Without the narrative and context behind it, Figure 1 just becomes a portrait of a black woman sitting in the countryside.

**Figure 1** Pollard, I. (1988) *from the series “Pastoral Interlude”*

In regards to my current practice the critical feedback I have received has been helpful in rethinking and challenging my intent. For example initially I was creating imagery that was simply of the dolls against a gradient background, before subsequently merging with a location scene, effectively a double exposure. However, I found the idea of creating a large series using this method would make it visually overwhelming and lose it’s impact. Feedback I received when I mentioned this sense of loss of impact aligned with my own views and my mentions of an alternative visual approach of using glitchy backgrounds instead to convey my message was positive. Further along in the project it became clear that my images were becoming too repetitive, due to limitations I had encountered with lack of ability to source new props and clothing, incidentally by this time the coronavirus outbreak, which had forced me to re-think within restrictions to do with sourcing props, had arrived fully at our shores. This allowed me a new additional avenue and message of intent to my work, as social media usage changed as social distancing orders came into play and the sense of ‘authenticity’ gained new meanings of whether the individuals themselves had changed behaviour or were persisting with the narrative of the perfect relationship.

**Figure 2** Schmid, J. (2011) Page Spread from Book: *Other People’s Photographs:* *Self*

Major influences to my current practice have tended be from modern contemporary artists of my own generation, active during the era of Instagram and post-internet landscape. However, despite holding similar viewpoints commenting on the modern phenomena of Social Media with the likes of Ulman, Soda, MacLean etc., aesthetically my approach is very different and more dystopian. Arguably practitioners like Ulman fit closest to emulating the vernacular of the stereotypical selfie, one only has to look at Joachim Schmid’s (Figure 2) collection of found photographs Other People’s Photographs, specifically his series Self (2011) to see the repetition in vernacular aesthetic of tropes of what makes a selfie. Batchen in Observing by Watching discussed Schmid’s series with a critical commentary on his series Self and writes: “Another frequent image appearing on Flickr is the self-portrait made with camera in hand, arm outstretched, a type of photograph made possible only with the advent of digital cameras. Schmid’s book on this genre implies that there are many more young photographers doing this than those over thirty, and more women than men.” (Batchen, G. 2013 [in] Wells, L. (ed) 2019; 343)

**Figure 3** Rejlander, O. (1857) *Two Ways of Life*

However I have also been influenced by 18th century portraiture, in that the likes of Gainsboroug manipulated the truth to please clients producing an aesthetic lie of stereotypical beauty on the identity of the sitter. Even early photography was not devoid of this manipulated phenomena, Oscar Rejlander comes to the forefront of my mind when it comes to manipulating the literal representation of reality of his sitters.

Positioning Practice

**Figure 4** Ulman, A. (2014) *Instagram Overview of ‘Excellences & Perfections’*

A practitioner who interests and regularly informs my practice is Amalia Ulman. In a Interview with Kaleidoscope on her project Excellences and Perfections she describes her intent as bringing “… fiction to a platform that has been designed for supposedly “authentic“ behavior, interactions and content. The intention was to prove how easy an audience can be manipulated through the use of mainstream archetypes and characters they’ve seen before.” (Ulman, A. 2014) She mentions that all her images were produced in advance, and curated before uploading with complimenting found material “..for which I would use the same Instagram filter as the ones taken by myself, to create an illusion of continuity.” (Ulman, A. 2014)

I agree that both her technique worked in creating a flowing series and her intent was achieved as she fooled her audience with her mockery on authenticity and on archetypal stereotypes of young women. This has influenced my development of my practice, as Ulman’s clear intentions of what she set out to achieve initially is an influence and I now aim to have a clear intent in mind on what message I want to convey before I start a series.

References

Figures

Figure 1 Pollard, I. (1988) from the series “Pastoral Interlude” [Online] Available from: https://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection_images/2006AT/2006AT6030_jpg_ds.jpg [Accessed 12/04/2020]

Figure 2 Schmid, J. (2011) Page Spread from Book: Other People’s Photographs: Self. [Online] Available from: https://otherpeoplesphotographs.wordpress.com/self/ [Accessed 13/04/2020]

Figure 3 Rejlander, O. (1857) Two Ways of Life. [Online] Available from: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/294822 [Accessed 14/04/2020]

Figure 4 Ulman, A. (2014) Instagram Overview of ‘Excellences & Perfections’. [Online] Available from: http://thetangential.com/2018/04/17/excellences-perfections/ [Accessed 17/04/2020]

Bibliography

Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida. pg 89. London; Vintage.

Batchen, G. (2013) Observing by Watching: Joachim Schmid and the Art of Exchange. [in] Wells, L. (ed) (2019) The Photography cultures reader: representation, agency and identity. pg 343. London; Routledge.

Henning, M. (2018) IMAGE FLOW, Photography on tap [in] photographies, 11:2-3, pg 134. Routledge. [Online] Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2018.1445011 [Accessed 11/04/2020]

Gavin, F. & Ulman, A. (2014) Kaleidoscope: Amalia Ulman Interview. Issue 23 -Winter 2014/15. [Online] Available from: http://kaleidoscope.media/interview-amalia-ulman/ [Accessed 17/04/2020]

Week 9: Enter the Academy – Reflection, A Brief Summary

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

How are different practitioners ‘curated’ together?

This question has been something I’ve been thinking about heavily this week and my conclusion is that it varies and depends on the rationale behind curating a group exhibition, in the past I’ve been to curated group exhibitions where the selection of work was sorted by:

The collector ex) Tate Modern: Sir Elton John’s The Radical Eye (2016)
Time Period ex) The Photographers Gallery: Feminist Avant–Garde of the 1970s (2016)
Location ex) The Photographers Gallery: Shot in Soho (2019)
Genre ex) The Photographers Gallery: Feast for the Eyes (2019)
Gender ex) RPS 100 Heroines: Representation on the line (2019)
Student ex) Falmouth Flexible: Landings (2017-)

Admittedly the following bullet points probably do not showcase the entire span of options when it comes to curating and selecting for a group exhibition, it does however remind me that group exhibitions are not reliant on the work being aesthetically or genre specific, to work together…

Curatorial Intentions and Rationales

**Figure 1** Designtransfer (2017) *Post-Internet Show*

Although the following exhibition is for the Berlin University of Arts alumni, student and teachers, my practice would fit within the subject parameters of the exhibition itself. They state the intentions as means to: “…share the desire to critically analyse and react to the internet as a mass medium.” (Designtransfer, 2017) Like my own practice the works shown in this exhibition provides social commentary on the internet, and the effects on societies representation and sense of identity, and in the case of Sonnenberg (Figure 2) both our works refer to the notion of the Uncanny Valley.

Sonnenberg, C. (2017) *The Importance of Eyebrows*

If my practice was curated into a new group exhibition/themed journal/ book chapter etc, other practitioners would likely be those who fall under the category of social commentary, the uncanny or post internet, or under the wider umbrella of representation and identity (as was the case with Unsocial Media_ (2019) which ended up being curated into RPS 100 Heroines: Representation on the Line). My work could also be situated within the category of student/graduate (and again my BA series Unsocial Media_ (2019) was published in the publication Photograd alongside other graduate work).

In regards to fellow practitioners the likes of Ambar Navarro, Amalia Ulman, Molly Soda, Petra Collins, Rachel MacLean, Signe Pierce handle similiar topics of social commentary, specifically around social media and the rise of the curated self, but via very different aesthetical approaches and messages in comparison to my own practice which perhaps at times angles more towards a dystopian future of the transhuman. MacLean and Soda’s inclusion of video practice in their work has lead me to question and experiment in previous modules cinemagraphic imagery as a vehicle to convey and assist my message.

Regardless of the format of publication, my main target audience is my own generation, predominately to make them critically think about how they consume and use the Internet and perhaps convince the viewers to reconfigure a new reality and realise the darkness of their condition. I want my audience to respond in as many ways as possible be it direct feedback, personal reflection, triggering of emotional memories and internal dialogues, reinforcement of the transient nature of their online presence, perhaps reconnecting themselves with the physicality of traditional ‘hardware’ photo albums instead of the false ‘software’ nature of images on the Internet, the real versus the unreal.

As my work comments on the virtual world, arguably the best location of publication is the digital space which would mean there are no location or time constraints to visitors beyond date of launch (and domain expiration), allowing a wider audience the ability to view my work and participate. Using a webpage allows scale and display methods to have more variety, as the size would be solely dependent on a viewer’s device. A webpage in itself focus on the temporality of imagery and could follow the standard social media style approach of one long scrolling stream. This approach could also be ported to the offline interactive PDF edition forcing viewers to scroll to view.

Another venue could be the traditional gallery space with images being either backlit or displayed via a screen to assist the narrative of the digital world, however I could use an empty shop unit, and display in the windows, meaning the exhibition would not need to be manned and would be visible to visitors 24/7. By not using a formal setting such as “White Cube” it means it is likely to gain an audience from beyond the traditional art scene, as well as benefiting from less formality to comply with the black frame aesthetic commonly found in mainstream galleries. Using retail space has added connotations reflecting the changing face of the high street as consumers migrate to Internet shopping.

References

Figures

Figure 1 Designtransfer (2017) Post-Internet Show. [Online] Available from: http://www.designtransfer.udk-berlin.de/en/projekt/post-internet-show/ [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Figure 2 Sonnenberg, C. (2017) The Importance of Eyebrows. [Online] Available from: http://www.designtransfer.udk-berlin.de/en/projekt/post-internet-show/ and http://catharinasonnenberg.com/the-importance-of-eyebrows.html [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Bibliography

Designtransfer (2017) Post-Internet Show. [Online] Available from: http://www.designtransfer.udk-berlin.de/en/projekt/post-internet-show/ and http://www.designtransfer.udk-berlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PM-Post_Internet_Show.pdf [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Falmouth Flexible (2017-) Landings. [Online] Available from: https://landings.space/landings19.html [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Photograd (2019) PGZ2019. [Online] Available from: https://www.photograd.co.uk/shop/pre-order-the-printed-edition-of-pgz2019 [Accessed 26/03/2020]

RPS 100 Heroines (2019) Representation on the Line I, II, III & IV. [Online] Available from: https://www.artrabbit.com/events/unframing-our-identities-representation-on-the-line-iii [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Tate Modern (2016) Press Release. The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection. [Online] Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/radical-eye-modernist-photography-sir-elton-john-collection [Accessed 25/03/2020]

The Photographers Gallery (2016) Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s: Works from the Verbund Collection. [Online] Available from: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/past-exhibitions/feminist-avant-garde [Accessed 25/03/2020]

The Photographers Gallery (2019) Shot in Soho. [Online] Available from: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/shot-soho [Accessed 25/03/2020]

The Photographers Gallery (2019) Feast for the Eyes. The Story of Food in Photography. [Online] Available from: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/feast-eyes-story-food-photography [Accessed 25/03/2020]

Week 9: Enter the Academy – Research

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

The Online Self, Relationships And Contemporary Art Photography?

“Almost one-third of those surveyed stated they often exaggerate their statuses and posts on social media, including their relationships.”
Arnold, A. (2018)

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically forms as part of the visual lexicon, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their aesthetical beauty or their sensationalist emotional power. So what is good art? Who decides? The creator, the artist? The art critic? The art historian? The gallery curator? Or is it as Roland Barthes implies in the Death of the Author purely down to the audience, the consumer? Art is indistinguishable from society in that participants of social media actively participate in the image world in a curated manner, becoming their own personal curator of their own life. Smith summarises the phenomenon:

“People hiding behind a screen. The first thing you do when you wake up is to check social media, and people always put their best moments on there to make people jealous. You never see their true selves, how they’re feeling if they’re depressed. People only post a snippet that makes them look good. It kind of gives an unrealistic view of people’s supposedly perfect lives, which are mostly unattainable.“
Smith, N. (2019)

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this ultimately means that the curated self is based on an authentic lie of perfectionism. Therefore I ultimately disagree with De Zayas comment that “Photography is the plastic verification of a fact.” (De Zayas, M. 1913; 125) as I don’t believe that visual depictions in photography are ever total fact, as you can curate what you want in a frame and what you do not.

The value of the photograph, frequently increases over time, however it is fundamentally down to popularity in consumer’s tastes and this arguably interconnects back to Barthes Death of the Author as worth and meaning over time is solely down to how the consumer reads into the image in question.

So is contemporary art photography different from earlier forms of art photography? I feel this is a really hard question to answer in that contemporary photography itself is hard to define in terms of beginning or end or even what it looks like, and throughout the past few decades the very definition of what contemporary is has changed drastically due to change in tastes, style, culture and the rise of the internet. I think Koslov aptly summarises my views on what makes contemporary photography with the following:

“Regardless, any style of “photography”, whether a snapshot or purposeful creative expression, becomes, at this moment in time, “contemporary photography”.”
Koslov, G. (2015)

References

Bibliography

Arnold, A. (2018) Forbes: Why Millennials Need To Reduce Social Media’s Impact On Their Relationship. [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewarnold/2018/03/21/why-millennials-need-to-reduce-social-medias-impact-on-their-relationship/#26cf9b9e15e6 [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Barthes, R. (1977) Image-Music-Text: ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ (1964). London; Fontana.

De Zayas, M. (1913) ‘Photography’ [in] Trachtenberg, A. (1980) Classic Essays on Photography. pg 125. New Haven; Leete’s Island Books.

Duggan, M. & Lenhart, A. (2014) Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology. Couples, the Internet, and Social Media. [Online] Available from: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/02/11/couples-the-internet-and-social-media/ [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Elliott, J.K. (2020) Global News: Influencers under fire for using coronavirus selfies to win viral fame. [Online] Available from: https://globalnews.ca/news/6488781/logan-paul-coronavirus-influencers/ [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Emery, L.F., Dix, E.L, Le, B., Muise, A. (2014) SAGE Journals: Can You Tell That I’m in a Relationship? Attachment and Relationship Visibility on Facebook. [Online] Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214549944 [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Feinstein, B. A., Hershenberg, R., Bhatia, V., Latack, J. A., Meuwly, N., & Davila, J. (2013). Negative social comparison on Facebook and depressive symptoms: Rumination as a mechanism. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2(3), 161–170. [Online] Available from: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033111 [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Koslov, G. (2015) Foto Relevance: What is Contemporary Photography? [Online] Available from: https://fotorelevance.com/what-is-contemporary-photography/#note-1769-28 [Accessed 24/03/2020]

Smith, N. (2019) Havas Group: Ideas. Gen Z talks Social Media. [Online] Available from: https://download.havas.com/posts/gen-z-talks-social-media/ [Accessed 23/03/2020]

Week 8: Responses and Responsibilities – Activity

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

How do photographs achieve change? Photographs themselves can never achieve change alone; they rely on the viewer to actively participate in a reading that evokes a reactive response to change their behaviour. In today’s image world we are in a sense desensitised, purely down to the volume of images we the consumer consume on a daily basis. Even in 1977 when Sontag wrote ‘On Photography’ she mentions that a saturation point has been reached and:

“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
Sontag, S. (1977; 21)

I think all images are ultimately transient in nature, as meanings and aesthetics change through time as well as relevance to the subject matter depicted within the image itself. This means that what one might consider to be sensitive or shocking material today is not the next, so it’s hard to say whether images should be censored or not if they hold controversial subject material. Due to individual and cultural differences what one person may consider to be shocking to another may be considered tame or ‘normal’ so it’s difficult to police where the line itself is drawn on what is acceptable to be shown and what is not.

**Figure 1** Barbican & Lange, D. (2016) *Politics of Seeing.*

The visual vernacular of aesthetics admittedly does play a large part on how ‘iconic’ an image is deemed to be, however this sometimes means that the image in question losses it’s context and meaning becoming simply a beautiful art object to obtain and admire, for example when the Dorothea Lange retrospective happened at the Barbican I recall the gift shop selling posters of Migrant Mother, and to me I feel this highlights the fact that this particular image has lost its impact as a message around the Depression in America, almost becoming like a modern version of Tretchikoff’s Green Lady.

**Figure 2** Tretchikoff, V. (1952) *Chinese Girl* *[Green Lady]*

References

Figures

Figure 1 Barbican & Lange, D. (2016) Politics of Seeing. [Online] Available from: https://straight75nochaser.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/art-chroncicles-killed-negatives-the-f-s-a/ [Accessed 16/03/2020]

Figure 2 Tretchikoff, V. (1952) Chinese Girl [Green Lady]. [Online] Available from: https://www.bonhams.com/press_release/12681/ [Accessed 16/03/2020]

Bibliography

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. pg 21. London; Penguin.

Week 7: Further Research: Perfectionism & Social Media

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

“We’re living in an age of perfectionism, and perfection is the idea that kills. Whether it’s social media or pressure to be the impossibly ‘perfect’ twenty-first-century iterations of ourselves, or pressure to have the perfect body, or pressure to be successful in our careers, or any of the other myriad ways in which we place overly high expectations on ourselves and other people, we’re creating a psychological environment that’s toxic.”
Storr, W. (2017; 17)

**Figure 1** Asquith, J. (2019) Pisa, Italy. Influencers have popularised perfect and quirky pictures at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but tourists are regularly amazed to see the extent of what lays the other side of the camera lens here

This week I have also revisited my bookmarked copy of Storr’s Selfie (2017) which questions the so-called perfectionism, that depicts the impossible ideals of beauty, success and size and his subsequent suggestion we are in an epidemic of narcissism, where the need to seek constant validation through likes, follows, retweets is part and parcel in comparing one’s success with that of a peer. This I feel remains a relevant comment towards my current work, as the notion of perfectionism is not only sought in the ideology of the perfect self, but also of the perfect location that influencers sell to consumers viewing their stream, ultimately the self however remains the centre-point and ultimate sell. I’m not alone in this thinking with the likes of Hart writing about the ‘Age of Vanity’ (Hart,A. 2014) and Asquith writing in Forbes last year the following comment about travel images:

“Images became less about the destinations, and more about pretty and edited images where individual egos and a drive for self-fame took over from the overriding message of inspiring travel. The destination took a back seat, and in an ever increasing attempt for ‘insta-fame’ people portrayed perfect lives of 365 days travel a year. Recent stories that have surfaced of apparent influencers editing the same pictures of clouds into different images does little to throw any water on the flames of the current debate.”
Asquith, J. (2019)

Amalia Ulman

**Figure 2** Ulman, A. (2016) *Screenshot of Excellences and Perfections*

An artist I’ve looked at in the past, who explores the phenomenon of social media identity and lifestyle, is Amalia Ulman. She achieves this in many ways, ranging from installation art, illustration, performance art, poetry and photography, as well as combining them. Ulman publishes and distributes her content via a variety channels and vehicles using: video, traditional gallery spaces, a photobook and online publication on Instagram. Ulman’s online presence of ‘self’ doesn’t reflect the reality of her life, instead it is satirical in nature, satirising the users of the Instagram online platform itself, simulating the result of cosmetic surgery such as breast enhancement in her series Excellences and Perfections (2014). Despite this her inauthentic content was voraciously consumed by her followers, who believed the images and videos she posts are real, rather than of her fabricated persona. Farkas’ foreword in Excellences and Perfections photobook (2018) is apt in describing not only Ulman’s series but also puts into question the reality of self, she states:

“The ‘realness’ of the immediate physical body intrinsic to the history of performance art is made blatantly hyperreal as Ulman moves the terms and territory within which performance is permitted to live. Performance art is suddenly more about an unreality. The performance of the self in everyday
life suddenly seems not at all distant from the raw authenticity that physical-presence-as-art-object has presumed. What if it is in fact this unreality that is actual? The announcement of the work as performance only after 14 September 2014 compounded this. The cries of ‘She’s fake?!’ rang out, yet died as the dawning of all of our personal performances as untruths, our selves, became lucid.”
Farkas, R. (2018; 6-7)

Like Ulman, my practice contains a strong narrative around the exploration of the human condition, what drives others to live their lives digitally online, and why people today are seemingly obsessed with creating online personas and false realities, whether it is simply a form of escapism or something more sinister. Ultimately it has led me to question whether the visual aesthetics, content and overall use of social media I encountered when coming of age shaped and impacted my generation’s world views and visual journey to the extent of becoming submerged in unreality… A manipulated manifesto of ephemeral imagery, where nothing is the truth, yet nothing is entirely a lie.

Molly Soda

Molly Soda’s work resonates elements of my own practice, having both experienced the early days of mass consumer access to the Internet, evoking nostalgia through the appropriation of early Internet tropes and aesthetics as a counter-balance to the lack of diversity offered by social media sites today. Soda’s practice is not limited solely to photography or a single platform. For example Soda in the past has like Ulman used Instagram, however she also present work via over online platforms and gallery installations producing videos, GIFs, zines and web-based performance art, alongside self-portraiture. Like Ulman, Soda uses her online platforms as a medium to showcase and develop an alter-ego, an internet-only identity. Soda’s work is ultimately an ongoing investigation on the ways people, particularly young women, use social media platforms to communicate. In an interview for The Creative Independent Soda discusses the internet today and mentions that:

“We have a lot less control over our profiles now. With Livejournal, Myspace, and Xanga, people were teaching themselves how to code, learning how to make things. I don’t see that as much anymore. Maybe teens are still doing that to a certain degree. But I think the aesthetics really got smashed. There are no more glitter graphics, only reaction gifs. It’s really streamlined and white and blue, with no music.”
Soda, M. (2018)

References

Figures

Figure 1 Asquith, J. (2019) Pisa, Italy. Influencers have popularised perfect and quirky pictures at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but tourists are regularly amazed to see the extent of what lays the other side of the camera lens here [in] Forbes: Have Instagram Influencers Ruined Travel For An Entire Generation? [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/09/01/have-instagram-influencers-ruined-travel-for-an-entire-generation/#3421dd971e30 [Accessed 12/03/2020]

Figure 2 Ulman, A. (2016) Screenshot of Excellences and Perfections. [Online] Available from: https://shop.whitechapelgallery.org/products/amalia-ulman-excellences-perfections-instagram-update-18th-june-2014-screenshot-2016 [Accessed 13/03/2020]

Figure 3 Soda, M. (2018) Bear. [Online] Available from: http://www.annkakultys.com/artists/molly-soda/ [Accessed 13/03/2020]

Bibliography

Asquith, J. (2019) Forbes: Have Instagram Influencers Ruined Travel For An Entire Generation? [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/09/01/have-instagram-influencers-ruined-travel-for-an-entire-generation/#3421dd971e30 [Accessed 12/03/2020]

Hart, A. (2014) Telegraph: Generation selfie: Has posing, pouting and posting turned us all into narcissists? [Online]. Available from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11265022/Selfieobsession-are-we-the-most-narcissistic-generation-ever.html [Accessed 13/03/2020]

Lesser, C. (2017) Molly Soda on How Social Media Changes Us IRL. [Online]. Available from: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-molly-soda-social-media-changes-irl [Accessed 13/03/2020]

Soda, M. [in] Geffen, S. (2018) The Creative Independent: Molly Soda on making art from your online history. [Online]. Available from: https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/molly-soda-on-making-art-from-your-online-history/ [Accessed 13/03/2020]

Storr, W. (2017) Selfie: How the West became self-obsessed. pg 17 (The Dying Self). London; Picador.

Ulman, A. Farkas, R. Stagg, N. Steyerl, H. Horning, R. (2018) Excellences & Perfections.(Farkas, R. Foreword pg 6-7) Slovenia; Prestel Verlag.

Week 6: A Sea Of Images – Activity

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

“The ‘ordinary’ moments being captured by Instagram users may be important for people to share with their friends (interesting trips, meetings with friends, family events) or they can be only of interest only to the author, and therefore look ‘ordinary’ to us because we are not involved in her/his life.”
Manovitch, L. (2016)

Are You Drowning Yet?

In regards to my own practice I have mostly stuck to using an Online Portfolio website and Social Media itself as a vehicle of displaying and sharing my work with it’s audience, as it easily suits my social commentary on social media. However a previous series within my current practice Unsocial Media_ (2019) has ended up being included in a group zine Photograd’s PGZ2019 and in a travelling exhibition with the RPS 100 Heroines last year, neither of which I had significant control over how they were displayed in terms of order or the edit of the images shown, however I have learnt that my images do work in a variety of scenarios I would not have considered in the past due to my luck in being included in such initiatives.

And When I am Formulated, Sprawling on a Pin

“Postmodern culture is often characterised as an era of ‘hyper-representation’ in which reality itself begins to be experienced as an endless network of representations.”
Mitchell, W.T. (1995; 16)

My first experience of actually looking at the National Geographic was as a teenager studying Media where it was more a sense of looking at it through a critical lens of demographics and semantics, perhaps because of this I found the following quote resonated with me “…the photographs found in the National Geographic represent the apotheosis of the picteuresque. That is, they embody many of the same conventions of color and form as plein-air painting. They aim to please the eye, not to rattle it.” (Grundberg, A. 1988)

Even now the National Geographic makes me think of the world through a very specific lens where once you have seen one image from them you have seen them all, the images are formulaic, visually satisfying to the viewer and what their target market wants to see, ultimately not dissimilar to how holiday brochures function – the notion of a picture perfect view of what a holiday operator wants people to see.

**Figure 2** Marden, L. (1962) *Tarita Teriipaia, from Bora-Bora*

The gaze is not only colonial but also voyeuristic with the sense of othering the subjects taken in ‘exotic’ lands, making them almost seem like they are ‘pre-packed’ and ‘oven ready’ images ready for quick consumption by hungry consumers, curated in a way not unlike how influencers on social media operate.

**Figure 3** National Geographic (March 2020) *The End of Trash.*

Women depicted in National Geographic are illuminated through the patriarchal lens of western beauty standards (e.g. 1962’s depiction of aesthetically beautiful Pacific Islanders), and tend to be depicted in stereotypical ways even today, with The End of Trash cover (March 2020) image implying it is women at fault for consumerism in fashion alone.

**Figure 4** National Geographic (November 2019) *Women A Century of Change*

Although the November 2019 cover image implies empowerment and celebrating women, the women selected to appear on the cover are mostly women who fit the notion of western beauty standards and of cultural clichés. To me it becomes further apparent National Geographic is catering to a mass consumerist vision of clichés when in 2018, they mimicked imagery produced for Tesco, by a Slovak-Hungarian photographer.

**Figure 5** Left: National Geographic (June 2018) *Planet or Plastic.* Right: Matus, B. (2015) *Tesco Eco Bag Advert.*

“Images begin to replace the world, photography loses much of it’s reason for being. Into the vortex, then, comes the digital.”
Ritchin, F. (2008; 23)

References

Figures

Figure 1 Murray, J. (2020) Are You Drowning Yet? Chart

Figure 2 Marden, L. (1962) Tarita Teriipaia, from Bora-Bora. [Online] Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/ [Accessed 05/03/2020]

Figure 3 National Geographic (March 2020) The End of Trash. [Online] Available from: https://www.isubscribe.co.uk/National-Geographic-Magazine-Subscription.cfm [Accessed 06/03/2020]

Figure 4 National Geographic (November 2019) Women A Century of Change. [Online] Available from: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191015005861/en/EXCLUSIVE-National-Geographic-Releases-Newest-Global-Rankings [Accessed 05/03/2020]

Figure 5 Left: National Geographic (June 2018) Planet or Plastic. Right: Matus, B. (2015) Tesco Eco Bag Advert. [Online] Available from: https://hungarytoday.hu/iceberg-ahead-hungarian-artist-accuses-national-geographic-of-plagiarism-over-viral-new-cover-photo/ [Accessed 05/03/2020]

Bibliography

Beynon, W. (2013) The Guardian: What does the ‘Instagram act’ mean for brands? [Online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jun/12/instagram-act-brands-copyright [Accessed 03/03/2020]

Cuthbertson, A. (2019) Independent: Tumblr porn ban: One-fifth of users have deserted site since it removed adult content. [Online] Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/tumblr-porn-ban-nsfw-verizon-yahoo-adult-content-a8817546.html [Accessed 04/03/2020]

Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2019) What Tumblr’s Ban on ‘Adult Content’ Actually Did. [Online] Available from: https://www.eff.org/tossedout/tumblr-ban-adult-content [Accessed 05/03/2020]

Grundberg, A. (1988) The New York Times: Photography View; A Quintessentially American View of the World. [Online] Available from: https://nyti.ms/29zmlAc [Accessed 06/03/2020]

Manovitch, L. (2016) Instagram and the Contemporary Image. [Online] Available from: manovich.net/index.php/projects/instagam-and-contemporary-image [Accessed 02/03/2020]

Mitchell, W.T. (1995) ‘Representation’ [in] Lentriccia, F. & McLaughlin, T. (eds.) (1995) Critical Terms for Literary History. pg 16. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Murray, J. (2019) Unsocial Media_. [Online] Available from: https://jasmphoto.portfoliobox.net/unsocialmedia_ [Accessed 02/03/2020]

Orlowski, A. (2013) The Register: UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now. [Online] Available from: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/ [Accessed 04/03/2020]

PhotoGrad (2019-2020) PGZ2019. [Online] Available from: https://www.photograd.co.uk/shop/pgz2019 and https://www.photograd.co.uk/shop/pre-order-the-printed-edition-of-pgz2019 [Accessed 03/03/2020]

RPS 100 Heroines Initiative (2019-) [Online] Available from: https://hundredheroines.org/ [Accessed 04/03/2020]

Ritchin, F. (2008) After Photography. pg 23. New York; W.W.Norton.

Zhang, M. (2016) Petapixel: Instagram Disabled Woman’s Account For Posting This Cake Photo. [Online] Available from: https://petapixel.com/2016/04/05/instagram-disabled-womans-account-posting-cake-photo/ Accessed 05/03/2020]

Week 5: Gazing at Photographs – Activity

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

“All the chatter about their unfiltered unlikability obscures the most powerful emotive thread binding together the Archetypical Millennial Woman – they desperately, want to be liked, even loved. This always seems to incur concessions to the male gaze.”
Liu, R. (2019)

Whilst not interested in landscape photography the following passage I found interesting, in regards to the notion of representation in general not needing to necessarily literal: “…whatever its aesthetic merits, every representation of landscape is also a record of human values and actions imposed on the land over time.” (Bright, D. 1985)

**Figure 1** Left: Teller, J. (2008) *for Marc Jacobs* Right: Wade, L. (2014) *Reinterpretation*

When I was looking at ads last week I came across the following article What If Fashion Ads Objectified Men the Same Scary Way They Do Women? from 2014 that deconstructed adverts that depicted women as fragmented body parts in ads which predominately seem to be by Terry Richardson.

The image attached however, an image by Juergen Teller in 2008 for Marc Jacobs, juxtaposed next to an edit by Lauren Wade, for me, was interesting in terms of the gaze, as the reinterpretations arguably neutralise the gendered perspective of the gaze, turning it solely into a voyeuristic one. I am not alone in this thought with some theorists considering Mulvey’s male gaze is out of date and article writers such as Holden mentions that the male gaze is today used as means of context for other gazes:

“If anything, today, we’re more likely to discuss the male gaze in the context of its alternatives, especially the female gaze. The female gaze has long been proposed as a solution to hegemonic male desire.”
Holden, M. (2019)

References

Figures

Figure 1 Left: Teller, J. (2008) for Marc Jacobs and Right: Wade, L. (2014) Reinterpretation [Online] Available from: http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/07/09/what-if-fashion-objectified-males-same-scary-way-it-does-females [Accessed 26/02/2020]

Bibliography

Bright, D. (1985) Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men: An Inquiry Into the Cultural Meaningsof Landscape Photography Available from: http://www.deborahbright.net/PDF/Bright-Marlboro.pdf [Accessed 27/02/2020]

Eagleson, H. Wade, L. (2014) TakePart: What If Fashion Ads Objectified Men the Same Scary Way They Do Women? [Online] Available from: http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/07/09/what-if-fashion-objectified-males-same-scary-way-it-does-females [Accessed 26/02/2020]

Holden, M. (2019) Mel Magazine: The State of the Male Gaze. [Online] Available from: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-state-of-the-male-gaze [Accessed 26/02/2020]

Liu, R. (2019) The Making of a Millennial Woman. [in] Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal. [Online] Available from: https://www.anothergaze.com/making-millennial-woman-feminist-capitalist-fleabag-girls-sally-rooney-lena-dunham-unlikeable-female-character-relatable/ [Accessed 24/02/2020]

Week 5: Gazing at Photographs – My Practice

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

“As a society we have been moving more and more to online applications, electronic communications, and digital composition. We stream movies, chat through social media and email, and explore our world and current events through a stack of open browser tabs. We may be watching a sporting event on one device while tweeting about it on another, or writing a paper in one application while researching (and procrastinating) in another digital window.”
Skains, R. L. (2015)

On Voyeurism

Having watched this week’s presentation Angier’s theory on what voyeurism stands for stood out to me, in that I agree voyeurism is “…about a peculiar point of view, based on a longing to possess that which one knows one cannot (and ultimately does not want to) have.” (Angier, 2007; 61) Arguably all who photograph are voyeurs in a sense as when we photograph we share with the world what we see.

When I consider my own practice in this context, it is primarily pseudo-voyeuristic, in that my photographs are narrative and commentary, but at the same time also constructed fictional realities that are critical and reflective.

**Figure 1** Murray, J. (2019) *Swipe On_* *from Unsocial Media_*

While I am not a voyeur in my photographic practice in the traditional sense, as I do not look at or watch individual or groups of people directly. However my practice is an interpretive form of voyeurism, where I combine merge, meld and mix things I see on social media.

In my photographs my constructed fictional realities do seem to possess their own ‘gaze’ which has taken on a life of their own, where I am aware of individuals who have perceived my previous work Unsocial Media_, as biographical of themselves, despite my practice being an entirely fictional construct, and ultimately subjective virtual realm.

Digital Gaze

“The digital gaze places us at the center of our world. Like the invention of perspective in painting, the personal feeds of social media are designed to converge upon us so that we become the ideal viewer. Nobody is more apt to survey our feeds than we are; they are meant for us.”
Jones, C.P. (2018)

I suppose my practice best aligns with theories around the digital gaze, in that my practice is at present an ongoing commentary on how we use and abuse social media and the internet, and envisioning the potential futures if we persist in the same behaviour. Interestingly some writers on gaze consider social media to be a modern frontier of The Male Gaze in that women on Social Media deep down maintain the expectation to look and act a certain way and that social media has exacerbated the competition via likes. James Garns’ article on La Bonne Artiste certainly seems to imply this notion with the women he has interviewed mostly expressing that they have a push/pull relationship with the male gaze with a fair few mentioning that it remains present because “…women see themselves through men’s eyes and so in many instances pit themselves against eachother because of men.” (Margi, Portugal in Garn, J. 2019)

So what is Mulvey’s Male Gaze?

In Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) she looked at visual cinema history through a feminist lens, instead of being a voyeuristic spectator she noticed how mainstream cinema catered to the male viewer and his pleasure in looking, linking to Freud’s theories of scopophilia as found in (Three Essays on Sexuality and Instincts and their Vicissitudes) she states:

“There are two contradictory aspects of the pleasurable structures of looking. The first, scopophilic, arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen.”
Mulvey, L. (1975)

Interestingly in Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal, Mulvey’s reflections in an interview with them on her essay are insightful in that today she considers the work to be more of a manifesto than something accurate. How subsequently in years since she has thought that “…the voyeuristic gaze is a gaze at stillness rather than at movement…” (Mulvey, L. 2018) this I found interesting as ultimately photography is an image frozen in time…

This leads me to Sontag’s comments on photographing people:

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they can never see themselves, having knowledge of them they can never have, it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”
Sontag, S. (1977; 14)

Arguably Sontag’s comment is effectively summarises the Johari Window theory in a photographic context. Photography ultimately highlights blind spots we have about ourselves, the photographer and in the case of photographing people the subject themselves.

**Figure 2** Luft, J. Ingham, H. (1955) *The Johari Window Model*

References

Figures

Figure 1 Murray, J. (2019) Swipe On_ from Unsocial Media_. [Online] Available from: http://jasmphoto.portfoliobox.net/unsocialmedia_ [Accessed 24/02/2020]

Figure 2 Luft, J. Ingham, H. (1955) The Johari Window Model. [Online] Available from: https://www.communicationtheory.org/the-johari-window-model/ [Accessed 24/02/2020]

Bibliography

Angier, R. (2007) Train Your Gaze: A Practical and Theoretical Introduction to Portrait Photography. pg 61. Singapore; AVA Publishing.

Garn, J. (2019) La Bonne Artiste: The Male Gaze and Social Media. [Online] Available from: https://labonneartiste.co.uk/the-male-gaze-and-social-media [Accessed 25/02/2020]

Jones, C.P. (2018) Medium: Social Media and the Digital Gaze. [Online] Available from: https://medium.com/s/story/social-media-and-the-gaze-d107327a5c90 (and an earlier edition of the article is available at: http://www.chrisjoneswrites.co.uk/social-media-gaze/) [Accessed 24/02/2020]

Luft, J. Ingham, H. (1955) Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. “The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness.” Los Angeles: University of California.

Luft, J. Ingham, H. (1955) Johari’s Window. [Online] Available from: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.361952!/file/johari.pdf [Accessed 01/02/2020]

Mulvey, L. (1975) Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema. [Online] Available from: http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema(printversion).html [Accessed 22/02/2020]

Mulvey, L [in] Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (2018) Suddenly, a Women Spectator: An Interview with Laura Mulvey. [Online] Available from: https://www.anothergaze.com/suddenly-woman-spectator-conversation-interview-feminism-laura-mulvey/ [Accessed 23/02/2020]

Skains, R.L. (2015) The Fragmented Digital Gaze: The Effects of Multimodal Composition on Narrative Perspective. [Online] Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278701907_The_Fragmented_Digital_Gaze_The_Effects_of_Multimodal_Composition_on_Narrative_Perspective [Accessed 23/02/2020]

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. pg 14. London; Penguin.

Week 4: Into the Image World – Meanings

PHO702: Critical Research Journal

“Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes; I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing’, I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image.”
(Barthes, R. 1980; 10)

I found Barthes comment in Camera Lucida (above) resonated strongly with the image I produced this week. As mentioned in previous blog posts about my practice, I ultimately produce images that are heavily staged with a recurring theme of challenging the uncanny. This has mostly meant in the past creating images in the studio using 1/6 scale realistic dolls, styled and posed by myself (and often creating miniature set ups to accompany them).

**Figure 1** Murray, J. (2020) *WIP an Authentic Lie?*

Work in Progress: Reflection

My current WIP follows on from my existing practice of using dolls and miniature props, however I have begun to transform their reality and landscape by merging them into glitchy real world locations, using layers and montaging in Photoshop, as a comment on how social media twists reality, as well as a comment on how the mass adoption of the smart phone has affected human relationships, producing couples who are in themselves an authentic lie, spending most of their time hunting for the perfect ‘aspirational’ couple selfie, rather than observing the world around them, or even each other.

Figure 1 was also the image I posted on to the forum’s for this week’s activity, where we were asked to post a new image from our current practice, without any kind of explanatory text. Overall the interpretations I received from my peers (Figure 2) were of a dominant reading, in line with my own intent. Some were more negotiated readings than others, in that they understood that the piece was about social media/the internet place in today’s world, but added additional meanings that I had not considered such as the notion that the couple in the image were one and same, a split personality rather than two separate characters.

**Figure 2** Canvas (2020) *Screengrab from forums*

The comments received in the forum aligned with the feedback received when I showed Figure 1 in the webinar, even with those on it who haven’t been on the same webinar as me before, and were therefore unfamiliar with my practice. However it was a negotiated reading that has made me question my intent, as one of my peers stated they felt my image used the tube as a metaphor, representing underground internet cables transporting our virtual self, and that everything is moving so fast that it’s like we all are missing something. Interestingly this reading is closer to my intention with my work in the previous module (Transhumane: Immortality of the Self). And perhaps Figure 1 is the means to link my current WIP to my previous module.

**Figure 3** Klein, M. (1998-2002) *Solange from Artificial Beauty Series*

Another interesting comment that seems to crop up in general about my practice is that the dolls, give off a Blade Runneresque vibe, as they look blank and robotic, yet at the same time gaze knowingly. I hadn’t given this much thought in the past, beyond the fact that my dad used to expose me to watching sci-fi dystopian films, in particular Blade Runner as it was his favourite. Having grown up with this type of visual imagery, has become a part of my subconscious, as well as influencing my own taste in films, books and visual culture. The latter arguably was assisted by the fact I grew up during the years of Y2K futuristic sub-culture in the early noughties, where artists such as Micha Klein created imagery that was a futuristic utopia that ultimately never came to be in reality.

References

Figures

Figure 1 Murray, J. (2020) WIP: an Authentic Lie?

Figure 2 Canvas (2020) Screengrab from forums

Figure 3 Klein, M. (1998-2002) Solange from Artificial Beauty Series. [Online] Available from: https://www.michaklein.com/catalogue-1 [Accessed 19/02/2020]

Bibliography

Alexander, L. (2016) The Guardian: The Y2K aesthetic: who knew the look of the year 2000 would endure? [Online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/19/year-2000-y2k-millennium-design-aesthetic [Accessed 18/02/2020]

Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida. pg 10. London; Vintage.