Artist research-Edward Honaker

Edward Honaker

Twenty one-year-old photographer Edward Honaker documents his own depression in powerful self-portraits. The series of black and white images illustrates the photographer's experience with depression and anxiety.

In an attempt to raise awareness of the topic, Honaker says about the project: "Mental health disorders are such a taboo topic. If you ever bring it up in conversation, people awkwardly get silent, or try to tell you why it’s not a real problem. When I was in the worst parts of depression, the most helpful thing anyone could have done was to just listen to me - not judging, not trying to find a solution, just listen. I’m hoping that these images will help open up conversation about mental health issues. Everyone is or will be affected by them one way or another, and ignoring them doesn’t make things better."

Honaker hopes his project will inspire others to not only have a conversation about mental illness, but push them to be more accepting of those who struggle with it. 

"When I was making the portfolio, I asked myself if I was the kind of person whom others would feel comfortable coming to if they were going through a difficult time and needed someone to talk to," he explained. "Truthfully, at the time, I don't think I was. I've still got quite a ways to go, but the whole experience made me a lot more patient and empathetic towards others."

The artist's openness is particularly important when it comes to mental health stigma and men, given that men are more likely not to speak up if they're having thoughts of suicide.

Artist research-Christian Hopkins

Christian Hopkins

Christian Hopkins, whose images experiment with combining self-portraiture and conceptual techniques, achieving dramatic and emotive results. Christian’s path into the photographic world was instigated when he received a camera as a gift and despite his reservations, forced himself to start photographing. Photography made him see the world in a more beautiful light and soon became a tool for Christian in battling his demons, providing a form of therapy in coping with his depression and allowing him a channel to communicate his emotions. 

'Whenever I felt controlled by a particular emotion, I wouldn't be able to think or concentrate properly until I took that emotion out of my head and trapped it in a photograph.' After a bout of depression and subsequent suicide attempts, Christian discovered Flickr his senior year of high school. At first, he began copying the style or other photographers he found through the picture-sharing website, before eventually finding his own surreal style.

‘Photography became a form of therapy that I could use to fight my depression,’

‘I would create an emotion that I was feeling so that I could see it. Once it was on the page, it was no longer in my head and that was incredibly relieving.’

Christian's favorite image that he has taken is one titled ‘Inner Demons’, because it ‘so accurately’ depicts what he is feeling, and he believes that anyone looking at the photograph can immediately understand the conflicted emotions that he is trying to convey, without ever having felt that way themselves.

‘It connects me to everyone who looks at that picture,’ 

Christian Hopkin's work is breath taking, the images are stunning, haunting and heat breaking, some images are true to real life and other have been inspired by films such as The Lovely Bones. His work is extremely personal and creative, the images are clean and the reason behind them is what I inspire to. 

For someone that used his work as a way of portraying how he felt he gained a huge following rather quickly, I can see why. The reason why I have included his work is because how blunt the images are, they do not spin a romantic undertone, they show the ugly truth behind depression. This is what I wish to show in my work.  

Artist research-Kate Joy Crawford

Kate Joy Crawford

"My Anxious Heart explores and identifies how emotionally and physically depleting general anxiety disorder can be from a personal perspective. As I have carried anxiety for the majority of my life, I’ve chosen to photographically depict this battle and its constant presence. Since it is within my own mind where anxiety is born, I have decided to interpret my roles as both instigator and victim through self portraiture.

Through this body of work, I am visually interpreting my own emotional and physical journey so that others may be able to understand this weight that so many bear in our society. The physical ramifications of the disorder, such as a racing heart, dizziness, shortness of breath and lightheadedness, frequently go unnoticed or are misinterpreted by those who have never suffered from anxiety. Although the physical symptoms make up a great deal of the disorder, the emotional outcome is exceedingly difficult to encapsulate as well. Anxiety bars the sufferer from the risk of discovery, the desire to explore new ideas, and the possibility of exiting a comfort zone. It makes sure that it will never be alone. It finds you when you’re in the midst of joy, or alone in your own mind. It is quiet and steady, reminding you of your past failures, and fabricating your future outcomes.

My interpretation of these symptoms through my images aids in the explanation of how true anxiety has the capability to drain every last drop of aspiration. This representation is achieved in the photograph with the use of black objects and materials that subtly interact within the frame. Manipulating the images in this way evokes a sense of overprotection and lingering presence. By providing these surreal images as expressions of anxiety within a realistic portrait, the viewer is guided through the internal and external struggle of a person living with this disorder. Using my own stories and experiences, I am capturing the raw essence of anxiety. Through this personal journey, I have grown and found that depicting my fears has become therapeutic, as well as a gateway for others to express their oppression and begin their own healing process."

While looking into photographers that deal with depression I stubbled upon Kate Joy Crawford, her photography is beautifully haunting as it hits home, the way that she describes it as therapeutic was one of the reasons I looked into her. Her work deals with the fact that she wouldn't want to sleep and how carrying things (water jugs) is not a hard thing to do but after a long amount of time you start to forget how easy it used to be and focus on how impossible it has become to imagine your life without them, the burden has become a norm, a heavy one. 

 

Although her work has nothing to do with alternative processing, it has inspired me to book the studio out to do some work including myself and possibly others just to dig deeper into the theme. If the shoot goes well I recently have bought some acetate sheets to print on. I also want to collect peoples stories to work with and see how they make me feel, I might do some work on them eg. after I have read them create an image of how I feel about them whether that be writing a journal entry or actually creating an image. 

Theme

Since my last tutorial I have been thinking of what the theme behind my images should be as I have the how and the what but not the why. Recently I have been going through quite a lot of things emotionally and have come to the point where it is really starting to effect my day to day life. Things such as not getting out of bed for a days at a time and becoming reserved, I have dealt with this is the passed but it has not ever gone away. I aim to show this through my work, to use this as a venting process. I also aim to get help for this, I have contacted the doctors and have been told to try and get in touch with Student Services too. I am still going to use alternative processing as I feel that the process itself is quite dark and sombre.

I thought about linking my project to my 'journey' into finding out about what goes on in my head. So like every time I go to see someone I will note it down and make a journal entry and then create work that is inspired by that day seeing as cameraless photography because when overexposed it is blinding white and sharp, this is to show my good days and my bad days.

I know this project is gonna be stressful which is why I am making sure that I consult doctors and therapist's during this and documenting what and how I feel. I may do this in a journal or a video diary, I am not sure yet.

lighting workshop

For the lighting workshop myself, Tanya, Becky and Josie met up a couple of days before the shoot to spin different idea's off of one another and we all came to the idea of making the set centre around what looked like a house party. We would use balloons, streamers, empty bottles of drinks and make the place look lived in an messy.

This is the mood board that we created.

We wanted the shoot to be vibrant and full of life, with this we used the gel lights to create a strong background. Josie, Becky and Emily were the main people that shot for this shoot and Maddie was the main model. I mainly dressed the set and directed throughout although we did change rolls throughout. 

These are some of the edits I have done on a few of my favourites.

I like the images where she looks more relaxed and is an onlooker, it is a nice juxtaposition with the lively set. 

As a group we have said that we will be doing more shoots with one another as we worked well and it was a fun experience as I do not normally use the studio. 

1st shoot and edits.

Flowers that were used for the scanning. I picked up the bunch on the right at a small stall in town and the collection on the left were from a wedding florist, they were about £2/£2.50 for each different flower, all in all I spent £12 on them. I will chop the stems off and keep them in water after I have finished scanning them to keep them fresh for when I want to create Photograms as I would like to see how different the shadows will turn out. 

Contact sheets.

These are the final scans, I picked the flowers apart and at first spread them in cling film so that when it was scanned it would create little indents, after a while I tried something different and wrapped a piece around the top of the scanner across the white background (I had initially wanted to use a black back ground so that when I was editing there would be less shadow but I tested it out on the white first. I will come back to this idea later on) this I then later scanned by itself so that I could layer it on top of other images.

This shoot was extremely fun as it was all about coming up with different compositions, what would show the best on the scan and was there enough gaps in between the flowers that I could see the cling film. It did take time but after a while I got into the hang of moving things around, it was all about playing with textures. 

I picked 3 images to work with (I will edit more it is just at the time these were the best scans to work with) and I tried to give each one a different vibe.

 

Going back to my first idea of printing on glass, I think the 1st image would be the best as it is strong and full of shadows although I would also be interested in the 4th image being printed as it is by far my favourite, also the layering that it is shown throughout the image would be interesting to view on glass (natural light illuminating it).

The first 3 images are all the same scan, I darkened the shadows, increased the contrast and the colour in this image. The other two I layered the image over itself and slightly lifted it to create more shadows in the 2nd one. I played around with the layering options till I found ones that were overall opposites of each other to show exactly how much light vs darkness there was in the one image. (1 and 3 need to be brightened).

The 4th image is one scanned cropped and layered with the cling film image giving it an overall white shade with a light glare on the left hand side.

The last image is the same image flipped and aligned side by side, this is self is a stronger image as I have rather than picked out the shadows, picked out the natural colours of the flowers and leaves. The light is stronger in this image as it the light from the scanner is reflecting off of the cling film.

Interesting blog post

http://photographydrawingpad.tumblr.com/post/129632368634/art21-theres-always-a-bit-of-that-chemical

Anna Atkins

 

Anna Atkins’ algae “shadowgraphs” from the first book illustrated by photography ever which she started in 1843! Here are a selection of some of my favourite cyanotypes from Atkin's 'Photographs of British Algea Cyanotype Impressions'. She learned the cyanotype process from her friend John Herschel who invented it the year before. Herschel is also credited with coining the term photography. There are about two dozen known copies of the book, each with variations in image, layout and page numbers.
I am extremely interested in learning the process myself as I have yet to try it, I aim to create prints similar to this but using petals and stems. 

Digestive art- Josh Lake and Luke Evans

Josh Lake and Luke Evans

 

This series, part of the instillation ‘I turn myself inside out’ by Luke Evans and Josh Lake of Kingston University in the UK. 35 mm film slides were swallowed, ingested, and excreted in a dark room by the artists who then ‘let their bodies do the rest’. The development comes through examination of the damages enacted on the emulsion surfaces by the body’s internal organs. So I suppose they’re not images of the inside of the body so much as recordings of the actions of the body.

Alan Jaras

'The interplay and the interaction of light on materials and surfaces has long been a fascination for me. As a research scientist and microscopist I used many optical and lighting techniques to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of materials. I am now exploring the world of caustics - those magical patterns that are formed when a beam of light travels through transparent textured materials.

Using traditional photographic techniques and pieces of complex shaped glass and plastics I project these patterns directly on to colour film. The resulting images and photographs that you see are purely analogue and are not computer generated, but a true representation of the patterns formed by the light beam after its complex journey through the refractive objects I create.

I have always sought to find a bridge between art and science; with these "Refractographs" I now feel I have achieved my goal.'

I was searching through Tumblr under the tag alternative process and his work was tagged, since then I have been looking through his work. This image is one of the ones that cause my eye because of the intricate detail behind the image.

 

This was what I found under the image;

'Twisting Light #8 Continuing the experiments on the refraction patterns of light made with formed and shaped plastic materials. With this one I seem to have created two microscopic creatures. The top one looks to me like a ‘daphnia’ or 'water flea’ while the bottom one appears to have structure reminiscent of the segmented body of a 'louse’ or similar parasite. Ooh.. I’ve gone all itchy. These images are analogue formed directly on to 35mm negative film by the refraction pattern of light passing through a formed plastic shape. The resulting print has been scanned for flickr. Minor adjustments have been made with Picasa2.

When seen large, small rainbow patterns are evident and also diffraction patterns and rings.'

His work is very creative as he is making these breathtaking designs with simple materials. 

Idea's for project

A quick mind map to show what ideas I have had for this project, I am aiming this project at the effect of light on images so for example using different harshness to create different images. I aim to print on glass to bring my project full circle so I can have natural light illuminate my images. The idea behind this is so that whatever the weather it picks up certain things about the image so if it is bright it will show all of the work and if it is overcast it will show the darker parts of the work more, this way it shows the different layers behind the image.