This is my MA blog for Creative Digital Media which will follow my journey and development over the next 2 years. I will be using this space to document, reflect, analysis and to inspire my thought and design processes.
I hope to inspire and to be inspired.
Moving forward from my last post, I thought about the creative ways in which I could communicate the issue with the 'Right to Buy' scheme that has already caused devastation for this Country.
My first thoughts were to develop a poster that would centre on the sale of a house, but with a clear message of the impact that it may have on their future family.
Poster Concept - Rough Visual
While drawing out my ideas I found that the poster lacked impact and originality. Loosely based on a property advert it sparked my interest in producing something specifically for a newspaper. The cheap quality of the newsprint paper and throw away attitude of the medium creates an interesting parallel with the low price housing and potential loss of our future homes.
I felt that it was important to design something with a very clear statement as cited by Fletcher, 'The terms "Show me", or "I see what you mean" indicate a connection between sight and subject which is very real' (2001: P.165). Using the medium that we currently associate with property will strengthen the legitimacy of the piece and most importantly reinforce the key message of the issue.
Example of Property sales in The Worcester Standard
- 9th January 2012 Edition
Using the above as a template the advert will take place centrally within the sales page so that the graphic stands out. I feel that the design should be based on this modern paper to illustrate the re-birth of the Right to Buy scheme and portray the immediacy of the issue.
I went back out to photograph more houses within the Worcester council estates. Again shooting on instinct and on the buildings that I felt were raw and beautiful in texture.
House Portrait 1B
House Portrait 2B
House Portrait 3B
House Portrait 4B
House Portrait 5B
House Portrait 6B
House Portrait 7B
I did visit my Nan's neighbourhood to see if there was anything left of the original style, however I was most disappointed to find that not even the an old metal gate existed. It was within another estate that I finally found a few of the gates that I used to swing on as a child, and of course the accompanying wired fence which can be seen in 'House Portrait 3B'. Amazingly 7B is the exact colour that my Nan's used to be all those years ago!
I photographed these houses on a high aperture setting to capture as much detail as possible within the materials and while editing all of these images from there RAW files, I decided not to crop to heavily because they are as much about the environment as they are about the architecture. Even though the houses were chosen on instinct I shot these in a documentary style to purely record how they are today, knowing that within a few more years they will have changed again.
The house portraits were a wonderful excuse for reminiscing on times past, however it is still important to remember that their very existence has become blurred in a world of greed and materialism. We are potentially in a reviving 'Right to Buy' era which caused the lack of homes and massively growing housing waiting list that we have today. People will buy their homes if it becomes easier too because it can be a great investment, but do they understand the consequences if the government don't hold up on their end of the Right to Buy promise, to replace the homes that they sell?
I never really understood my attraction to social housing or the areas that they reside in other than the feeling for community I get from them. I love the way that neighbours talk to one another over the fence with bags of shopping that they have got from the local shop, walk into each others houses freely and chat about the weekly goings on in the street. There are no secrets here, raw emotion is lied bared on the streets and this unrefined texture of life is engrained in the spaces that they live in.
I was fascinated to come across a book which had been published about an exhibition in 1991 at the Museum of Modern Art, which was dedicated to 'British Photography from the Thatcher Years'. The new policies and legislation had changed Britain substantially and brought new photography that was more thoughtful in technique and toward social issues of the time. The catalogue for the exhibition by Ms. Kismaric (1991)describes that.....
'The current radical changes in British life have charged these photographers with an artistic mandate to look closely at the people and at the landscape in which they live. While the earlier British documentarians photographed the 'other', those outside their social class, and generally of a station less fortunate than theirs, these photographers embrace what is closest to them. Their work reflects an affection for their country and fellow citizens that is unflinching in its description of the country's most extreme ills and the complex manifestations of economic change that are restructuring its society.'
Looking and recording the places where we live adds another layer of meaning to the pieces of art that we create. It becomes more than just a documentary piece as it is lead by emotions and meaning rather than just a desire to press the shutter.
John Davies is just one of the five photographers included in the exhibition. Davies produces large format black and white images from a high view point to really capture that mixture between man-made and nature-made.
Visually very exciting, these images help to convey the mass repetition found on council estates. They depict the raw openness of the chatting occupants on the street and feeling of communal similarity that I love.
I had a real desire to visit a local council housing estate and capture these houses. Remembering back to my childhood, I had a particular image in my mind of what I thought was a 'council house'. During the shoot I was reminded of my Nan, she had purchased her council home during the Thatcher years, however because she lived on her own she didn't have the money to alter it for a long time. I have so many wonderful memories of that house, the cement porch, the wired fence, the orange rusty metal gate that let Nan know someone was there. I loved that gate, I used to sit in the top part and swing from side to side while picking off chunks of paint to reveal all of the colours underneath!
Usually semi-detached or terraced housing, the council estates were a mass of plain duplicated houses. Of course I was mindful that some houses (like my Nan's) are now ex-council however, they will always have those tell tale identifiers from when they were built.
House Portrait 1A
House Portrait 2A
House Portrait 3A
House Portrait 4A
House Portrait 5A
House Portrait 6A
Photographing other peoples homes is quite daunting, it was a case of making sure that my settings were ready to go, clicking and moving fast. The homes I chose were not the most attractive or tidiest but I felt most drawn to all of them, the textures are just beautiful. I keep going back to House Portrait 1, my Nan's house was nothing like this but the gritty effect of the front and that entrance with the small blast of colour in the background lures me inside. I want to go back and see what's down there! Perhaps I could I when I go out shooting again.................?
The white picket fence theory is predominately rooted in the USA and apart of the 'American Dream' ethos. The dream is a promise of success and prosperity to all, this results in the overall effect of materialism and idealism that I talked about in my last post.
However, doesn't that want dominate the minds of people in Britain too? Our own nations dream can be found to develop during the 1980's when Margaret Thatcher fought for the council tenants right to buy their homes. The 'Right to Buy' scheme published in 1979 allowed freedom to it's tenants who became property owners over night and abolished the rules which stopped them from decorating and changing their homes to suit their own needs. Reading an article by McVeigh in The Guardian published in 6th of December 2009, I found evidence of the psychical shadow that has been cast as a result of the 'new freedom' given out to people over the last 30 years. The statistics written by McVeigh (2009) were that 'council houses sold off passed the 2 million mark'which ultimately lead to the impact that 'people across Britain on waiting lists for a council house, up almost 10% in a year'.
Selling off public housing while failing to rebuild replacements and the added effect of the recession, which has put a stop to building new homes, has vastly reduced the number of houses available to a growing population of people who need them. The article also comments on how this was also 'abused widely by companies that made profits out of portfolios of ex-local authority housing' (McVeigh 2009). Families without homes now struggle to live with the relatives that will take them in, or the state has to pay to keep them in a B&B's or privately rented homes until they can find alternative accommodation. This was in fact mine and my daughters situation 7 years ago. People were so desperate to own a little piece of freedom that they have now effected the lives of their children and almost abolished the chance of them living in their own homes. Strange it may seem that recently it has been reported that the 'Right to Buy' scheme will be used again. A new article released on the 19th of November 2011 in the Mail explained that up to 2 million tenants could buy their homes at a huge discounted rate as they were in the 1980's. The money will then be put back into the development of new housing and as reported by Groves (2011), 'The Government hopes that the new drive could result in another 100,000 homes being built, creating 200,000 jobs'. The British Dream of idealism and materialism starts again, who knows where it will end this time?
My current aim is to focus and develop creative research for my proposition around the area of 'Life not being as it seems'. Talking through my thoughts with my tutor I came across the real foundations for the film American Beauty and the essence of what it is really about.
The White Picket Fence is present in the very first opening scenes of the film and stands in front of a very large and perfect white house. The white fence isn't just a boundary to separate land but now a symbol of what some consider 'perfection'. Inside lives a middle class married couple with excellent jobs who are raising their children in a 'nice' community. However, this fence only lies on the surface of the reality of what is beneath it. Just as American Beauty illustrates, Lester and Carolyn have well paid jobs which allows them to live that 'American Dream' and in the beautiful white house, but as the story unfolds they show us how their well paid careers actually bring them utter misery.
For example, Carolyn brakes down after she struggles to sell a house. This scene is more than just tears, it is a battle with the person she is...'Shut up! Stop it! You wimp, you baby! Shut up!' Her job has reduced her to slapping herself in the face and harshly scrutinising herself, hardly the perfection that we perceived from the other side of the fence. The white picket fence, as illustrated in American Beauty, has ultimately the produced an era of materialism and idealism falsely connected to idea of happiness.
Looking into the white picket fence I came across a film written by David Lynch called Blue Velvet (1986). Through extremes of environment, Lynch opens with scenes of the idyllic. Peaceful large American houses, white fencing, American Beauty roses, lust green lawns and a slow motion shot of a waving fireman to an elderly man watering his lawn on a hot sunny day. A sour taste is left on the scene when the elderly man suffers a heart attack and falls to the ground, the chaos of water spurting in all directions. The viewers is then taken to the ground, through the lust green grass where beetles are loudly savagely consuming another insect, as Nesbit (2006) explains in his blog, 'Lynch's visual painting ties in with the theme thatAmerican Beautywill later adopt about "looking closer."'
The story of Blue Velvet is based around the character Jeffrey Beaumont who comes home from school after finding out that his dad has had a heart attack. On his return from seeing his father Jeffrey finds a human ear in a field, this is when Lynch's film gets very bizarre. The story develops as Jeffery becomes more and more curious and does some investigating with the detective's daughter, Sandy. He then meets the woman at the heart of the story called Dorothy Vallens, a singer in a night club, who's husband and son have been kidnapped by a psychotic man called Frank. He uses this to blackmail Dorothy into being his sex slave and act out his sick, abusive fantasies about his mother.
Jeffrey witnesses the cruel sexual attacks on Dorothy and realises that life is not as he once thought it was. In a scene in Jeffrey's car, Jeffrey tells Sandy 'it's a strange world Sandy' and within the same scene my title is a quoted by Sandy in regard to a dream that she had. She believes that the world she dreamt about was dark because there were no robins, yet when they did come the world was filled with love and it made a difference. Her explanation to the darkness was that 'There is Trouble until the Robins Come'. Sandy shows her immature innocence in this scene and believes that love will save the world, a complete contrast the harsh life that is lead by Dorothy in this film.
The bright white picket fence will always cast a dark shadow onto whatever is inside it. This is inevitable to its form but now also exists within what it stands for, created by peoples greed and undeveloped ideals.
I revel in the idea of 'life not being as it seem's', it means that there is more content below the surface, more to explore and more to enjoy. Henk Van Rensbergen work has inspired me to look around life's chaos and see the beauty of time and what it does to people, architecture and landscapes.
However, although there is variety in what we see there is always a recurring element which makes these pieces personal to the viewer and an identifier to the creator. Rensbergen's images are filled with human touches, they are beautiful in texture but gritty and for me hold a sadness to the forgotten souls of these places. These are my identifiers and I will connect these qualities to Rensbergen's work in the future.
This thought leads me onto the idea of 'motifs', a repetitive mark, element or sound used within a medium to emphasise a meaning or emotion. The film American Beauty, which I mentioned previously uses motifs in the form of the American Rose or petals to create really beautiful bursts of colour within scenes. The colour of the rose varies in each scene but the red is the most prevalent. The meaning of the red rose has been explained in many ways by lots of people who have been touched by this film. For me it illustrates the idea of beauty and it's meaning to each character.
For example, Carolyn sees beauty in 'success', please go back to my entry 'This is my Life' for more details on characters. This is shown in Carolyn's facial expression of longing when looking at the red 'Real Estate Kings' board outside of the house he has just sold. Also, during the opening scene of the film Carolyn is pruning a beautifully formed rose grown in her garden while her neighbour Jim, admires her success and asks 'how do you get them to flourish like that?' Carolyn enjoying the beauty of success goes on to share tips with Jim.
