The digital family album

Explore the family album and its iconography or reflects on representations of the self in digital culture.

I chose to produce a series of 6 photographs (these can be photomontage, staged photography, work using found images, work including your own family archives etc.) which reference the family album in some way.

Produce a 500 word blog post outlining your working methods and the research behind your final submission. (Whose work did you study in preparation for this exercise? Why did you choose the techniques that you did and how effective do you think your choice has been, for example?)

I saw an advert for an exhibition called “Reportrait” advertised for Nottingham Castle from late May onwards, exhibiting the work of a wide range of artists including Julie Cockburn who embroiders photographs and Samin Ahmadzadeh who weaves shredded photographs together. This, together with a post from Colossal, prompted me to research Julie Cockburn’s work and the work of other photographers who embroider onto photographs. The craft seems to attract female photographers, although there are male photographers who have exhibited at galleries in America. I was attracted to the idea because it links in with World War 1 postcards and I found examples of photographs being embroidered on Spanish and German postcards from circa 1925.

Julie Cockburn re-imagines found photographs using geometric shapes to add a modern interpretation to nostalgic images – a link between the past and the present. By embroidering over or in front of the face, the viewer sees more of the unseen image.

Figure 1: The Dahlia Effect (2014) Julie Cockburn

Diane Meyer sees photograph’s failure as preserving the experience and personal history. A photograph is nostalgic and obscures the understanding of the past. (Reminds me of Fontcuberta’s Spanish archives).  By cross stitching some of the image, Meyer erases content and context, replacing it with “pixels” (cross stitch) which the viewer is drawn to. There is a connection between the representation (or glitch) and forgetting what really happened.

Figure 2: New Jersey (2011) Diane Meyer

Carolle Benitah explored her old family photographs which represented her and her family, and shared her identity her family history, family secrets, identity and place in the world through revisiting the image and coming to terms with the memories by sharing her version of events through reconstruction of the event by embroidery. Benitah’s use of beads and embroidery is her way of coming to terms with the past event. Making holes in the image, she puts the past behind her.

Figure 3: Les Carfads (2009) Carolle Benitah

All the photographers who use embroidery on their images sew either a mask or a grid over the figures or place we are supposed to be looking at. This physically adds another layer to the image giving it more texture and the photographer experiences the materiality of the photograph, rather than printing and framing or posting on social media. Because the craft involves design and working with the image but using traditional embroidery techniques, it is quite a meditative process and does not have to be done in front of a computer using photoshop. I began to question the authenticity of the older image; some sites claimed to have old embroidered postcards for sale, but I wondered how hard it would be to produce a fake?

I have used this as an exercise to see what works and what doesn’t and am hoping to visit the Nottingham Exhibition.

Starting with a few images which I downloaded from my Facebook albums, I printed them out in a mix of sepia and colour images. The printer didn’t recognise sepia as a tone, instead printing in monochrome which was too dark. I wanted to experiment with different methods and see which worked and which didn’t. The first 6 images worked and the last 3 were not brilliant. They were also chosen to fit in with the embroidery silks in my collection.

Arranged in chronological order, the first image is a corporate image from a firm my husband worked for 18 years ago. This had a mix of people on it, some we kept in contact with and others who are lost when jobs change. It brought back memories, some good, some bad and I can see why some photographers see the needlepoint as therapeutic. I was happy with the result. I would not be able to tell who the people were any more, focusing my attention on smaller details.

So, what happens when you apply the same type of embroidery to a photograph where someone is no longer with us? It doesn’t feel like the image has been destroyed. The memory of the person and the event is still there. It was a chance to revisit the good memories by spending longer with the photograph and reinterpreting it.

In the third image, I was keen to see if the landscape colours worked. They did, which gives me an idea for an assignment 2 image. (These 3 were inspired by Diane Meyers)

The 4^th image uses a different technique, one similar to the old postcards. By embroidering some of the shapes such as a fountain and a bicycle wheel, I got to spent time with a photo that was posted on social media as a holiday picture which is forgotten after the holiday. This would have been a good exercise for seeing shapes in photographs in the days of The Art of Photography.

Images 5 and 6 take Julie Cockburn’s idea applied to my images.   I preferred the small dots. They were much harder to finish – I covered the image in tracing paper, marked the areas to sew and removed the tracing paper at the end. There was a risk of pulling the stitches through. I played with the number of strands. 6 worked the best for the large image and 3 for the smaller dots.    

     

The ones which didn't work

I tried embroidering a squiggly line. It made an already complicated photo look messy. 

I think the circles should be different sizes and colours. The photo is too large for the small circles.

When 2 faces are covered, I couldn’t decide which way to rotate the stripes. Perhaps this is where a geometric shape works best? (managed to get a glitch in it when uploading)

I came across Jane Wagner Deschner's website with a collection of interesting found photographs which had been embroidered. This one is from her "crazy quilt series". It brings together a group of unknown people. In some collections she has taken a quote and embroidered across the images. I thought this may be useful for one of my assignment images.

Figure 4: From the crazy quilt series (2012) Jane Waggoner Deschner

Bibliography

Benitah, C (n.d.) Lens Culture: Carolle Benitah: Photos – Souvenirs. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/carolle-benitah-photos-souvenirs last accessed 10/5/17

Binding, A. (2012) Deface book. Sleek 33. Fashion Now Art Forever [online] p112 Available at: http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/juliecockburn last accessed 10/5/17

Colossal (2010-16) Found photographs embroidered with colourful thread by Julie Cockburn. Available at: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/tags/embroidery/ last accessed 10/5/17

Deschner, J. (n.d.) Embroidery. Available at: http://www.janedeschner.com/ last accessed 17/5/17

Jobson, C (2017) Found photographs embroidered with colourful thread by Julie Cockburn: Colossal [online] Available at: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/03/found-photographs-embroidered-with-colorful-thread-by-julie-cockburn/ last accessed 17/5/17

Jobson, J  (2014) Artist Hinke Schreuders alters 1950’s advertising and fashion photography with hand stitched embroidery http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/08/embroidered-images-hinke-schreuders/ last accessed 17/5/17

Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery (2017) Reportrait. Available at: http://www.nottinghamcastle.org.uk/exhibitions/reportrait last accessed 17/5/17

O’ Hagan, S (2014) A stitch in time: The dreamlike world of embroidered vintage photography. The Guardian [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/28/embroidered-vintage-portrait-photography-julie-cockburn   last accessed 10/5/17

Robert Mann gallery (2014) Robert Mann gallery: Embroidery. Available at: http://www.robertmann.com/2014-embroidered-gallery/ last accessed 17/5/17

Radwanska Zhang, I (2016) A matter of memory: Photography as object in the digital age. British Journal of Photography [online] Available at:  http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/10/a-matter-of-memory-photography-as-object-in-the-digital-age/ last accessed 17/5/17

Stem, M (2014) Transformative touch: Photographs laced with thread. Hyperallergic. Available at: https://hyperallergic.com/142366/transformative-touch-photographs-laced-with-thread/ last accessed 17/5/17

Taylor and Francis (n.d) Reframing photography: Theory and practice [online] available at: http://www.reframingphotography.com/resources/diane-meyer last accessed 10/5/17

The Photographers Gallery (n.d.) Julie Cockburn Available at: http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/juliecockburn last accessed 10/5/17

The Saachi Gallery (2017) The Saachi Gallery: Maurizio Anzeri. Available at: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/maurizio_anzeri_new_britannia.htm last accessed 17/5/17

Yourazeri, S (2013) Diane Meyer’s embroidered photography. Available at: https://www.yatzer.com/Diane-Meyer-Embroidered-Photography last accessed 17/5/17

The artist as archivist

Sherrie Levine

Levine documented the “materiality of photography” Cotton, C (2011:221) using well known images from Walker Evans, Elliott Porter and Edward Weston, which she re-photographed from exhibition catalogues and hung in contemporary art galleries.

Levine was interested in exploring Walker Evans subject of poverty in the Great Depression, and how the emotions are conveyed to the viewers. These images were available in art catalogues and books and so her role could be seen as that of curator of Walker Evan’s image to the public in the exhibition at the ICP (International Centre of Photography) New York. The work is not vernacular, it is already in the public eye, and this is perhaps where the idea became controversial. Walker Evans had set out his authorship, which Levine over-wrote as her own by giving his work a female narrative.  

Levine as the author changes the intent of the original image. Evans contributed to art history with his oeuvre, gaining recognition and becoming a household name. Levine challenged this, encouraging the viewer to question the meaning and history of the image. Walker Evans’ photographs of the Burroughs family, sharecroppers in the Depression era were published in a book that became the archetypal record of the rural American poor. In 1979 Levine re-photographed Evans' photographs and without any manipulation of the images. Her work was exhibited in 1981 (entitled After Walker Evans) in New York, and was both a scandal and a success. Labelled as feminist and post-modernist, her exhibition exhibited a “critique in the commodification of art…Levine prefers to view her work as a regenerative act of collaboration, transforming the considered extraordinary masterpiece into something organic and continually renewable.” (Leeuwen, n.d.)

Figure 1 Walker Evans 1936, After Walker Evans 1981

Levine showed that once the image becomes commodified, the original photographer is forgotten although by re-presenting images to contemporary audiences allow different meanings to be gleaned from them. In Fountain (Buddha) takes Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) urinal and turned it back into a photograph, which she considered to be an art object. Instead of a white porcelain urinal, Levine photographed a gilded bronze one and re-contextualised it portraying it as art which is valued higher. In this she demonstrated the distance between “objective document and subjective desire.” Eklund, 2004)

Figure 2 (2010) Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery

Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince worked with Levine in the 1970s and 1980s and were labelled the "Pictures" generation in which the concerns of photography facilitated the viewers’ understanding of art. Levine’s copies of photographs questioned the principles of originality and examined strategies and codes of representation, drawing attention to the diminished possibilities for originality in our image-saturated world. Their work included reshooting Marlboro advertisements in which they assumed the roles of director and observer. “In their manipulated appropriations, these artists were not only exposing and dissembling mass-media fictions, but enacting more complicated scenarios of desire, identification, and loss…Levine’s works from this series tell the story of our perpetually dashed hopes to create meaning, the inability to recapture the past, and our own lost illusions.” The Met (2000-2017)

References

Cotton, C (2011) The photograph as contemporary art. London: Thames and Hudson.

Leeuwen, R (n.d.) International Centre of Photography: Sherrie Levine: Biography. Available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sherrie-levine?all/all/all/all/0 last accessed 7/5/17

Eklund, D (2004) The Met. The pictures generation. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcgn/hd_pcgn.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Met (2000-2017) The Met: After Walker Evans: 4. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214 last accessed 7/5/17

Bibliography

Cotton, C (2011) The photograph as contemporary art. London: Thames and Hudson.

Lee, S. (2007) Sherrie Levine. Available at: http://www.simonleegallery.com/exhibitions/sherrie-levine-june-2007 last accessed 7/5/17

Leeuwen, R (n.d.) International Centre of Photography: Sherrie Levine: Biography. Available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sherrie-levine?all/all/all/all/0 last accessed 7/5/17

Eklund, D (2004) The Met. The pictures generation. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcgn/hd_pcgn.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Art Story (2017) The Pictures Generation: After walker Evans (1981) Sherrie Levine. Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-the-pictures-generation-artworks.htm last accessed 7/5/17

The Broad (2017) Sherrie Levine. Fountain. Buddha (1996). Available at: http://www.thebroad.org/art/sherrie-levine/fountain-buddha last accessed 7/5/17

The Met (2000-2017) The Met: After Walker Evans: 4. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214 last accessed 7/5/17

Lens Culture (n.d.) Book Review: A lifetime of shooting self portraits at a shooting gallery. Collected and edited by Eric Kessels. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/erik-kesselskramer-a-lifetime-of-self-portraits-at-a-shooting-gallery last accessed 1/5/17
Time (2013)The Vanishing Art of the Photo Album: Tim Clark. Available at: http://time.com/3801986/the-vanishing-art-of-the-family-photo-album/#22 last accessed 1/5/2017
https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/archive-fever-uses-of-the-document-in-contemporary-art

List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Pinterest (n.d.)Walker Evans 1936 and After Walker Evans 1981. [Photograph]  Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/530087818625349999/ last accessed 7/5/17
Figure 2. Docklands and East London Advertiser (2010) Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery [Photograph;Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Sherrie Levine's Fountain (Buddha) during the opening of The Corporeal, Whitechapel Gallery] At: http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/entertainment/arts/duchamp-s-fountain-takes-centre-stage-at-whitechapel-gallery-1-672292 last accessed 7/5/2017