Photography Proposal (750 Words)

Photography Proposal

 

My initial idea for my Final Year Photography Project centres around the writings of Franz Kafka and techniques used by Japanese surrealist Kansuke Yamamoto in his photography. In my previous two photography projects I have focused on landscapes, as it’s the subject I am most interested in. This years project will also revolve around landscape photography, but with a different approach.

Franz Kafka’s writings often present a grotesque view on society, with the characters suffering from guilt, isolation, and anxiety that attempt to search for their personal salvation.  Kafka’s work The Zurau Aphorisms will be the focus of my photographs. Aphorism #87 “A faith like an axe. As heavy, as light.” (Kafka 1917-1918, cited in Calasso 2006) is an example of the theological issues that Kafka dwells on in the Zurau Aphorisms.  Other topics that are dealt with are good and evil, alienation and redemption and isolation. These topics have strong visual signifiers, thus creating a photograph, which will play a heavy emphasis on visual signifiers and how the viewer interprets them. I feel as this will serve as an interesting theoretical approach to the project and will allow me to view landscapes and photography in a different way.

As I’m taking a surrealist theoretical approach, my photos will naturally be shot in a surrealist style. In David Bate’s Photography & Surrealism, he talks about what constitutes surrealism in photography. He proposes that there are three types of signifiers in surrealist photography: mimesis, prophotographic, and enigmatic (Bate 2004). These types of signifiers are different levels of what we as a viewer see as believable and unbelievable. Bate’s signifiers link with John Solt’s essay Perception, Misperception and Nonperception which refer to the works of Japanese surrealist Kansuke Yamamoto. This is where the inspiration for the aesthetic look of my photos will come from. Kansuke Yamamoto’s photographic techniques include creating collages of incongruent images, bending the dimensions of perception, and using dramatic sequences, usually a collection of three to five photographs (Solt 2001). One of the visual techniques of Yamamoto that I like is the layering of images on top of one another. With this technique he usually created a juxtaposition between the two images, thus forming a strong visual effect.

Another one of Yamamoto’s techniques that I am inspired by is his bending of dimensions, creating a surreal perspective. Therefore, this ideal of surrealism encapsulates the entire picture, from the way it’s shot, the subject of the shot and the meaning behind the shot. This is what I aim to recreate.

Kansuke Yamamoto’s landscape photography conforms to ‘the other’, thus disagreeing with David Bate’s idea that  “‘Landscape’ is the taking shape in symbolic form of a space for the projection of psychical thoughts on culture, identification and ‘civilization’ under the name of nature” (Bate 2009, p93).  Yamamoto is shooting landscape in a make believe setting. This is challenging the ideals of ‘Photographic vision’ (Bate 2009, p97), landscapes are not being surveyed photographically but being based on the personal identity of the photographer. This is my attempt to challenge what we see as landscape through the ideals of Kafka and the visual aesthetic of Yamamoto.

“There is an indefinite amount of information in a continuous-tone photograph, so enlargement usually reveals more detail but yields a fuzzier and grainier picture… A digital image, on the other hand, has precisely limited spatial and tonal resolution and contains a fixed amount of information.” (Mitchell 1992, cited in Manovich 1995)

I still haven’t decided whether to take my photographs using film or digital. This quote has made me think about the creative possibilities using film and how that would fit into my project. This idea of enlarging the picture to create a fuzzier picture opens up many possibilities with my project and allows me to play with ideas of texture in photography.

These are all my initial ideas for my landscape photography project. The use of camera has still yet to be decided but the theoretical and visual themes are there, and further research will narrow down what Aphorisms and what visual techniques I will use.

Bibliography

Bate, David (2004) Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent. London: I.B Tauris & Co Ltd

Bate, David (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts. New York: BERG

Calasso, Robert (2006) The Zurau Aphorisms. New York: Harvill Secker

Kafka, Franz (2000) The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics) London: Penguin Classics

Manovich, Lev (1995) The Paradoxes of Digital Photography. Available from: http://manovich.net/TEXT/digital_photo.html (accessed: 23rd October 2013)

Solt, John (2001) Perception, Misperception and Nonperception.  Available from: http://milkmag.org/163-2/  (accessed 23^rd October 2013)

Photographs

Yamamoto, Kansuke (1956) The distance between landscape and dusk

Yamamoto, Kansuke (1939) Title Unknown

Visual Aesthetic of the Photographs Idea

As I have finally decided to take inspiration from Franz Kafka’s The Zurau Aphorisms, my theoretical approach is sorted out so I have been thinking about how my photographs are going to look. As Kafka is considered a surrealist writer, I thought it would be a good idea to use surrealist photographic techniques. I’ve found it difficult to research surrealist photographs but the three I have found are Man Ray, Jerry Uelsmann and Kansuke Yamamoto with the latter’s photographic techniques providing the foundation for the visual aesthetic of my photographs.

Yamamoto layers images on top of each other to create a surreal effect and giving the photographs more meaning. This will be one of the major techniques that I will employ in my photographs. It gives me a lot more creative options and the creative boundaries are limitless. It will easily help me decipher Kafka’s Aphorisms as they are quite complex, thus, two images will show more to the viewer than just the one and add a complexity to the meaning behind my photographs fitting in with Kafka’s work.

Another one of Yamamoto’s techniques is his bending of dimensions, changing our perceptions thus, creating a surreal feeling towards the photograph. This makes the viewer take a second look at the photograph, and allows for further analysis of the photograph. This technique was also seen when I researched Daniel Reuter and his project. It’s definitely something that I will try and include in my photographs as it adds another dimension and a further complexity to their meaning tying in with my theoretical approach.

These are some of my ideas for the visual aesthetic of my photographs, they could further develop by the time I do my presentation presenting my ideas.

Theoretical Idea for my Final Year Project

As I said previously said about my last project, it lacked more of a theoretical approach and that it something that I would like to concentrate on with my Final Year Project. I was finding it troublesome to know where to start with the theoretical approach until I thought that the best place to start looking for inspiration was the books I was reading. I’ve been reading ‘Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class‘ by Owen Jones which is comment on how the working class have been demonised by the mass media and negative portrayal of them in the public eye. If I was to do a photography project based on the book, the photographs would be a social commentary and would have to have the feel of a documentary style and include portraits. This isn’t really where I want to go with my project, Landscape is something I feel more comfortable with and its something that I am better at doing.

Another book that I have been reading is Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a short story about a boy who wakes up as a ‘monstrous vermin’ . Over the past month I have been interested in Franz Kafka whose works centre around the themes of alienation, isolation, physical and psychological brutality. As I thought this was an interesting path to research I started looking at all of Franz Kafka’s works to see if any stand out and could inspire my project, as a lot of his works are fictional short stories I found it hard until I came across the Zurau Aphorisms. This piece of work Kafka is a selection of short statements which are reflections on metaphysical topics, dealing with good and evil,  truth and falsehood, alienation and redemption, and death and paradise. I was instantly drawn to this as the topics dealt with in these aphorisms have strong visual images therefore they have the foundation of a great photo. Quite a few of the aphorisms deal with issues of isolation as well, therefore, its something that I have always included in my projects and I will continue to be able to do so.

My idea of using the Zurau Aphorisms is to choose 12 Aphorisms that interest me and that I feel will make the foundation of a good photograph. The photographs will consist of the ideas behind my thoughts what Kafka is saying in the Aphorisms and how I perceive the subject in the photographs. The meanings of these photographs will be personal to me, but hopefully allegorical in the sense that other people could take what they like from them.