Facade ??

Tonight i've been doing some thinking about my project.

I've been thinking about family portraits and what they are exactly.

In my opinion, I think that formal portraits hide SO much. The photographer doesn't know the ins and outs of someones life, and they don't want to know, they want to make the family look good and look happy and friendly. But... is that true to the family ?

Where does a portrait go ? It is usually framed and hung somewhere in the family home, usually somewhere on show to visitors. So it is an object to portray happiness to other people ? Is it to fool the family themselves that they are that happy and friendly and close? Is it a facade ?

My mom has always wanted a Family Portrait done of her, me and my 2 brothers. I've never asked her why so tonight I decided to do just that. I asked her what her motivation is for wanting a family portrait. Her answer was... "so I can look at it and think to myself 'see we were happy' So I can look at it to see us all together"

So in this respect, it's a facade. Because in truth we are not all together, and are we really that happy ? My brother lives with his girlfriend, my other brother is away at boarding school, and as of September I will be away at uni, leaving my mom home on her own. So will it act as a memory to her, almost like a keepsake. It is not a reflection of younger years because naturally as siblings we argued, we were sad from loss, we never really had a family relationship where we all sat down together for 'family time'.

It's so difficult and really mind-boggling. I feel really interested in this whole idea of it being fake and posed, I don't think they are true to the family. I want to follow this into my final product, I just don't know how ! HELP !!

Personal Family Photographs

These photographs were given to me this Tuesday night, so I havent had a chance to annotate them and start picking at them yet.

They are photos of my Mom's mom and dad (and their moms and dads). I never met my Nan and only met my Grandad a couple of times, so it is hard to look at these images without having what she has told me floating around in my thoughts.

Family Photographs

I like in this image how the youngest child is reaching up to the fathers jacket. Is it a cry for affection or is it a loving gesture ?

The man's attention is not in the same place as the woman and children. His head is turned, is this to portray superiority ?

Michelle Caplan

She is a mixed media collage portrait artist. She uses this technique to tell stories of the lives of people who are missing or dead. She is often commissioned to do these works, people send her images, text, fabric, anything they want included to her and she puts these collages together.

She does them knowing nothing personally about the people.

I think they are really beautiful, acting almost like a modern day cameo. They can be passed through generations remembering loved ones.

I am going to attempt to create my own collage in this style but using photos and letters from my Dad. Caplan works on a non-personal level, but I want to see if I can create something just as beautiful as her work but on a very personal level.

Photoshop editing

I took three photos of Becky because I wanted to experiment with the idea of people having layers. I feel that portraits often hide the truth, because everyone can put a smile over the top of true emotion when they want to hide it from the world.

So there must be more than what meets the eye.

I wanted to use photoshop to lower the opacity of each layer and alter colours to see if I could find a way to portray the inner emotions in a person.

The top layer on this image is still to forceful, it doesn't work because you can't see enough of the underneath layer.

This image is much more what I was trying to achieve. The underneath layer is almost as visible as the top layer. The top image colours are muted down slightly to show coldness and lies, and the underneath layer has warmer colours to show truth and pure emotion.

Death Portraits

In Victorian England it was common for family to have a death portrait taken when a family member died.

Sometimes the person would be alone in their coffin, with decoration around the coffin. Other times the rest of the family would pose around the corpse.

In some cases, it was difficult to distinguish which was the corpse and which were the living. The way to note which is dead, is to look whose face was very clear. Due to long exposure on the camera, the living tended to blur slightly.

Triangles

In family portraits, past and present, there is most often a triangle to be found.

The man is traditionally known as 'the man of the house', he is superior, he is always in charge and this is always portrayed in family portraits. However, it is not always obvious.

This is the most obvious line of hierarchy I have found in a family portrait.

Disappearing Dad

I read an article on christianitymagazine.co.uk by Mark Stibbe, which is about his views on fatherless families.

In response to that article I used photoshop to create the image above. I lowered the opacity of the father to show him 'disappearing'. I purposely made the lines around him jagged and sharp because as Mark Stibbe portrays through his article, when a dad leaves it is not always a smooth exit, it often leaves the family feeling hurt and almost like there is a sharp hole in the family unit, it's often a painful subject to talk about.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann's black and white photographs of her children portray the universal qualities of dignity, individuality and intimacy.

Although many people look at these photos and think they are exposing her children, they are quite provocative images; they are ultimately a documentary of her family. It shows the intimacy that the family has with one another, but it also lets you into their home. The photos allow you to see that they live in a woodland home, with surrounding private land, allowing the children to be free in their own home to be able to run around and play with no clothes on if that's how they wish to be. They are not living under any society rules, they have their own space and they use it how they want to use it.

From media

I found these images in Hello Magazine.

This image is really posed. The man is in the shirt and trousers and the woman is in pyjamas; so does the woman stay home while the man goes to work ? Does the dad spend time with the children ? Are they happy ?

Formal photographs often hide a lot of truth behind the formality, or do they ?

This image I think is a little more truthful. The children are distracted by mobile phones and other things on the table, the parents are the 'posed' and focused subjects. But is this a true portrait ?

Inuit Tribe

I want to include tribes in my research because they often have interesting marital beliefs so I found the Inuit Tribe and looked into their beliefs.

Inuits are not strictly monogamous: many Inuit relationships are implicitly or explicitly sexually open marriages. Polygamy (heterosexual marriage including more than two people), divorce and remarriage are fairly common. Some divorces require community approval. Marriage is usually arranged at early age or forced on a couple by the community.

A household may contain a man and his wife, or wives and children, it might include parents and adopted children; family structure is flexible.

Every household has a head, an elder or a particularly respected man.

'Average family size is getting smaller'

I looked at BBC reports about family as an initial starting point.

I found an article by Dominic Hughes, which says that the commonly used figure '2.4 children' being the 'ideal' amount of children in a family (2 parents, 2.4 children) only really represents the families' of women born in the mid-1930's to early 40s. However, in 2009 the Total Fertility Rate was on average 1.96 children per woman.

In textiles I heat transferred this image of 2 adults and 2 children (the 'ideal' family) and I planned to bleach out the youngest child. Unfortunately, there was no bleach so I haven't yet been able to complete the sample.

Slight Change

After a small group crit, I decided to amend my project theme slightly. I will now be looking at the family unit and at family portraits. I will be looking at 'normal' families and how the definition of a 'normal' family has changed in recent years.

I will be looking at how families are portrayed in the media, photographers who look at the family and questioning what a true family portrait really is.

- Family units with tribes

- Crime within families

- Hello Magazine

- OK Magazine

- 'love thy neighbour'

- How do religions teach about marriage?

- Traditional family portraits

Interesting Etiquette

As we grow up we're told lots of things that we all adhere too for sake of politeness and simply because our parents tell us to! Many of these courtesies can be traced back to the Middle Ages, the age of knights and chivalry, kings and queens. They were created to be courteous, symbolic and some were simply logical.

Handshakes - Presenting an empty hand forward to another person shows no weapon. The other person does the same, again showing they are unarmed. Therefore a handshake meant they were going to talk not fight.

A salute - Think of a knight wearing full armour, he cannot chat while wearing a helmet. So if he wanted to talk, he must remove the barrier by lifting the visor. When lifting the visor the knights hand ended at his forehead, parallel to the ground. A salute, indicating the lifting of the visor, indicates the knight talking not fighting.

Making a toast - When the glasses clinked together, the drinks sloshed together on impact, meaning that whatever was in one drink (poison,drugs,aphrodisiacs) had now been passed into both glasses. If you were to drug your friend you would get some too. Making it your best interest to not let your friend drink an evil drink.

Covering your mouth when you yawn - the first reason is religious. It was believed that when you yawned, your mouth was wide open and the Devil could reach in and yank out your soul.

- the second reason being that in Middle Ages, peasants and nobility stank. When yawning people had a strong chance of swallowing one the flies that swarmed around them.

Keeping elbows off the dinner table - simply a necessity. In those times people ate at very long, thin dinner tables where everybody was packed in tightly. If one person were to put their elbow on the table, the only place it could move to was into the next persons dinner. If someone had their elbows on the table, the next person could not eat.

This information was found at www.allsands.com

Step 1

My first step was to find out the dictionary definition of 'moral'. As I don't want to follow what I think a moral is and half way through the project find out I was wrong.

Moral:

1. concerned with the principles of right or wrong behaviour
2. concerned with or derived from the code of behaviour that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society.
3. examining the nature of ethics and the foundations of good and bad character and conduct.
4. holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct.
5. a lesson that can be derived from a story or experience.
6. standards of behaviour; principles of right and wrong.

So, morals are what a person or society sees as right or wrong behaviour.

Initial Research

So the brainstorm I have made highlights a few areas to look into as initial research, these are:

• moral codes
• the history of etiquette
• 'seen but not heard'
• Sally Mann
• principles
• The 9 year old alcoholic
• Teen Pregnancy
• Cultural Teaching differences
• Gypsy's being married off young
• Questioning people of all ages
• 10 Commandments
• Society influences
• Values learnt from church
• How parents feel about their child's decisions
• Child abuse
• Religious teachings

Suggestions to other areas I should look into are more than welcome :)

A theme

I want to base my FMP on sayings and life teachings that parents / grandparents tell children at a young age. (i.e 'don't drink & don't smoke')

In religion God is known as the father, and in many cases what he says goes and people live strictly by his 'rules'.

I will be looking into how people choose to either follow their young teachings and lessons or choose to rebel against them.

Any thoughts would be appreciated greatly !! :)

hmmm.. end product ?

So I know that I want to do a photography FMP, however I don't want to make a magazine, website or look book. I want to produce photographs, I think on a large scale. I know that I have to cover the Surface Pattern unit, so need to work out how to tie this in to the photographs...

Maybe I could work towards an exhibition as my final outcome ?