Recreate a childhood memory in a photograph. Think carefully about the memory you choose and how you’ll recreate it. You’re free to approach this task in any way you wish. • Does the memory involve you directly or is it something you witnessed? • Will you include your adult self in the image (for example, to ‘stand in’ for your childhood self ) or will you ask a model to represent you? Or will you be absent from the image altogether? (You’ll look at the work of some artists who have chosen to depict some aspect of their life without including themselves in the image in the next project.) • Will you try and recreate the memory literally or will you represent it in a more metaphorical way, as you did in Part Two? • Will you accompany your image with some text? • In your learning log, reflect on the final outcome. How does the photograph resemble your memory? Is it different from what you expected? What does it communicate to the viewer? How? It might be interesting to show your photograph to friends or family members – perhaps someone who was there at the time and someone who wasn’t – and see what the image conveys to them.

One of the problems of living a very long way from your hometown is you don’t have access to family photographs very readily or do you have access to family members to recreate scenes if you so wish. Especially, went your already small family is already vastly diminished.

I thought long and hard about this project and I was initially very stumped – As I think I have mentioned in the previous post I’m a very shy and reserved person and unfortunately, this was the same as a kid. As a result, I was never one for large groups of friends at school, and I spent a lot of my time with either my own company or with my parents and maternal grandparents. Both my grandparents and mum have sadly passed away so even if I in the UK creating an xx years later shot of an existing memory would be possible. So I have created an imagre based a vague memory that I have of a photo me swinging between my grandad and perhaps mum or grandma on a family holiday in Blackpool when I was very young.

I recreated the image using HO scale (1:87) model figures because these hold a key memory for me as a child. For many years I built with grandad a model railway, and one day i hope to rebuild it with a child of my own (who am I kidding, I’ll be rebuilding it kids or not).

The image above is not an exact representation of the image – actually I’m unsure I could even track it down these days if it even still exists, but the image contains all the information my brain needs to actually bring a tear to my eye.

Obviously, I’m the little boy the red hair gives it away, my grandad away wore a suit, even to the beach, I want the memory to be of my swinging between my mum and grandad, and the figure reminds me of my mum, immaculately dressed, however, my mum was blonde and my grandma dark haired so the dark represents my grandma. The photographer is my Dad. The sand represents the seaside of my all my childhood holidays we taken.

I know in my heart that this a constructed image, a combination of memories thrown into a pot but the more I look at it the more I can imagine the day, and I’m going to print it and hang it on the wall.

PostScript

One of the other things the exercise asks us to do is to show the image to family members who would have been there to witness the memory. I did wonder if someone knew what I doing would their impression of the image to tainted? Does knowing what an intention is, affect the viewer’s interpretation of an image? I think it may do. So unannounced I send the image to my Dad via WhatsApp, he had no I idea about the project I was working on. His response was “Looks familiar”; I think I can take it I have succeeded in whatIi intended.

In this series, Australian photographer Tracey Moffat dresses up as a number of famous females Scorpios, which is her own horoscope sign, including among others Hillary Clinton, Bibi Anderssen, Vivian Leigh and Bjork.

“Like all artists, we make art to see if we can do it. I think that’s why I did this, to see if I could do it, if I could become all these women”

While Moffat conceals her face in many of the pictures, it is remarkable how well she resembles he subjects. Moffat manages these transformations through Photoshop and various costumes – I’m assuming many trips to the charity shop. And as she is concealing her face the majority of the time she is relying on gesture and copying the subjects body language.

The project works well when viewed I conjunction with Moffat’s series “Being” which serves as 2^nd part to “Scorpio”. This series shows the contact sheets of the transformation process and selection for the base images that were then photoshopped to the final images of “Scorpio”. There is a nice juxtaposition here as they are rather mundane whereas the final images of Scorpio are quite flamboyant.

Reference

Roslynoxley9.com.au. (2018). Tracey Moffatt – Being – Under the Sign of Scorpio, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 2005 – Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. [online] Available at: http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt/385/ [Accessed 8 Oct. 2018].

Roslynoxley9.com.au. (2018). Tracey Moffatt – Under the Sign of Scorpio, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 2005 – Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. [online] Available at: http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt/380/ [Accessed 8 Oct. 2018].

The Sydney Morning Herald. (2018). The secret lives of Tracey Moffatt. [online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-secret-lives-of-tracey-moffatt-20050730-gdls0e.html [Accessed 8 Oct. 2018].

The coursebook asked me to look at  3 pieces of work by Trish Morrissey

Front (2005-7).

I this project, she visits beaches around the UK and Australia and gets random family groups to allow her to swap places with the mother including wearing their clothes and copying their mannerisms. She then assumes the physical place of the person, i.e. cuddling “her” children and/or snuggling up to “her” partner, while the person she replaces takes the photograph.

the artist’s statement,

These highly performative photographs are shaped by chance encounters with strangers, and by what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed. Ideas around the mythological creature the ‘shapeshifter’ and the cuckoo are evoked.

The cuckoo metaphor very obviously (after reading the artists statement), and there is a sense of Morrissey taking advantage of the people involved. Obviously, they agreed to allow her to enter the group however the whole series gives off a sense that she has crossed boundaries, this is echoed by the boundaries the individual groups have built around themselves at the beach.

While I would love to go back and be a fly on the wall for the conversations that must have preceded each shoot – which no doubt were very interesting.  I doubt I would have to Morrissey’s request, as a male I doubt I would have been asked but I would encourage anyone I was with to refuse too.

Interestingly, on the point not agreeing to the request, I doubt a male photographer would be able to accomplish this project – there would be much-ingrained resistance males rarely swap clothes with mates never mind strangers…

The Failed Realist (2011)

Based on a very interesting premise; that young children’s imagination is very much more mature than their ability to draw what they are seeing. The project consists of a number of portraits of Morrissey, with her face daubed in face paints by her daughter. Which are a mess due to the daughter being too young to be controlled in her actions

The project is one trick pony with most of the pictures being very very similar, this is a mess. It strikes me as the self-indulgence of a parent, showing off anything there child does. I would have enjoyed it more if was a series portraits of different mums (or dads) with the face painted by their own child.

Seven Years (2001-4)

In this series, Morrissey and her sister assume the characters of a variety of fictitious family scene, from the 1970s and 80s, to say something about the generalities of family life.

Extract from the artist’s statement,

They assume different characters and roles in each image, utilizing body language to reveal the subtext of psychological tensions inherent in all family relations. The resulting photographs isolate telling moments in which the unconscious leaks out from behind the façade of the face and into the minute gestures of the body.

The images produced are familiar to anyone who has a family album covering that period – stilted, posed pictures and typical clothes and hairstyles. I actually enjoy this series more from a pure nostalgic point of view.

Together these projects show that  Morrissey is a performer as much as a photographer. She has to convincingly act the part of the person she is pretending to be, in order for the fantasy to work.

Even though I want to push my comfort zone I cannot say that this type of self-portraiture I would try to emulate.

References

Trishmorrissey.com. (2018). Trish Morrissey. [online] Available at: http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-sy/workpg-09.html [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].

Nikki S. Lee is a Korean photographer and filmmaker, living and working in Seoul, although formerly based in New York. Lee uses different artistic disciplines: Photography, performance, film and multimedia. She combines the different media to explore the different layers of information on which the identity question can be examined.

According to her own words, she likes to have many layers in her artwork and she makes a kind of art that seems very simple at first, but once you peel off the layers you find many stories inside of it. The more you think about it the harder it gets to interpret.

In her various projects, she transforms herself into different types of people: Drag Queen, Hispanic, Yuppie, Senior, Lesbian, Exotic Dancer, Skateboarder. For some of these projects she had to learn certain abilities (e.g. to dance, to ride a skateboard, etc..) to play the roles convincingly; and for the “Senior Project” she needed a professional makeup artist to characterize herself as an old person.

Lee believes that all people have fantasies about living other people lives ( I tend to agree on that). Lee says: “I am free. I can become anyone. Don’t ask me who I am”. Within this series of “Projects”, she does not appear to have any intention to make fun of these social groups. And she says she does not have any identity issue, although as a teenager she fantasized about being someone else. It would be deemed as such, however, when you look at it in relation to her other project she does appear to be more commenting on her own identity.

“Parts” is about taking photos with people that she had a close relationship with, and then she cut them out from the picture.

The idea of the “Layers” project is using drawing portraits of herself drawn by street painters in different cities of the world and putting three of them from the same city into a single image, to illustrate how people from different parts of the world portray her.

Although her work can look “amateurish” (in fact, the pictures are not taken for Lee, but for non-professional photographer friends/passers-by by), it has been carefully planned and executed. Using snapshot quality/style pictures make viewers believe that the pictures are “real”, and the method makes the subjects feel at ease in front of the camera.

Each project requires a three-month period preparation when she makes friends among the people of the group she wants to characterise herself as. She spends a lot of time getting to know the individuals in the group She has learned that each group has its own quirks and outlooks on life and there are  similarities between all the groups

Through this process, she appears to have achieved a better understanding of herself. Playing other roles is a way to demonstrate to herself that she is able to do many things, that she perhaps would not have been able to do without hiding behind a masquerade.

References

YouTube. (2018). INNERview Ep65 Who Am I? The artist drawing attention in NY – Nikki S. Lee. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMychWgKedA [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). Photographer Nikki S. Lee Can Turn Into Anyone. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI8xpJItPVI [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].

Tonkonow.com. (2018). Nikki S. Lee. [online] Available at: http://www.tonkonow.com/lee_projects_3.html [Accessed 7 Oct. 2018].