Final Project

Critique: Emotions

Sadness, Joy, Despair... man, I need more Happiness.

Self-Proposed Project: Emotions

I would like to do a project based around the ideas of emotions. I've been on the emotion thought-train recently, due to my Interpersonal Communications class and a recent project I did for my drawing class.

I wouldn't mind doing images in color, but I would like to explore other ways to express emotions and moods. Like facial expressions, and maybe do a stop-motion video that runs through them. I would also like to explore the idea of using things other than the face to express emotions, like a room or the weather as co-factors to the mood set with a figure in the frame. Maybe some without a figure.

One specific idea I had in mind was a plain background with six figures - all the same figure, all wearing different colors of clothing, to represent the ideas of the six primary emotions as defined by my Communications textbook: fear, anger, sadness, joy, surprise, and disgust. And facial expressions to match. I could have my model wear a white t-shirt on a black background so that I could color in their shirt. The figures would be collaged together so that they are in one frame.

I could also explore the idea of showing no emotion at all. Like, someone being surprised at a party and they didn't react to the attempted surprise.

Constructed Realities and Final Project Prompt

Man Ray

Florence Meyer (top image)

I could recreate this image by making paper plate masks featuring different emotions and the person in the middle of them all have a blank face.

Man Ray

Le Violon d'Ingres (bottom image)

For this image, I could draw a flute on someone's arm and have another person pretend they are playing it.

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For my final photo project, I would like to do one based around the concept of emotions - the obvious and the subtle, the facial expressions and body language. I would also like to explore constructed realities around the topic of emotions, in kind of an illustrated story-book way.

Constructed Realities

1. In what way do you "construct" your identity? In what ways do you "perform" in your daily life?

I construct my identity though my choice of clothing, interests, hobbies, extracurricular activities, religion, job and/or carreer. I 'perform' when I need to hide my emotions - like if something upsets me and I need to pretend that I'm okay.

2. Describe some ways in which your personal culture and social environments are "constructed".

I choose my friends, and my friends are one of my greatest influences, so based on their interests and how they construct their lives, my life will in turn be affected.

3. Describe some ways in which your physical environment/space are "constructed".

Buildings are constructed. Pretty much every space that is man-made is is constructed - I cannot think of anything outside of nature itself is not constructed.

4. In your daily life, what would you consider to be "real" and what would you consider to be "constructed/fabricated"?

The sun is real. Time is real. People are real. I think that most everything else is constructed.

5. Describe a narrative tableaux that you might create to be captured by a photograph. A narrative tableaux can be defined as "Several human actors play out scenes from every day life, history, myth or the fantasy of the direction artist" (Kohler, 34).

There are six people, each wearing a different color to represent one of the six following emotions: joy, disgust, fear, surprise, anger, and sadness. They are all in a white room, interacting with each other based on the emotion they represent.

6. Describe an idea for a photograph that includes a miniature stage or still life. A description of such an image is "the tableaux reconstructs events as in the narrative tableaux, but in miniaturized format, using dolls and other toy objects" (Kohler, 34).

There are several origami shapes, some in mid-form, some completed, and then there are still flat pieces of paper without a single fold in them, waiting to be molded into something new.

Constructed Realities: Photographer Research

Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist - he borrows images from historical artists and inserts his own face onto them, such as paintings by Frida Kahlo and photographs of Marilyn Monroe. He creates alternate people by making these hybrids of himself - alternate personalities, so to speak. If he were to be this person, have their body with his face, what would his life be like?

Man Ray

Man Ray was an American artist who lived most of his career in Paris. He was a part of boththe Surrealist and Dada movement. Interesting fact about the Dada movement - the name was decided by sticking a knife into a dictionary and the name that it landed on was dada. Man Ray is most well known for his photograms, which he named rayograms, after himself. He would place objects on photo-sensitive material and expose them to light. He would create interesting concepts by placing seemingly random objects next to each other in these compositions - one such included spoons and pearls. Man Ray would also vary the amount of time exposed for each of the objects in an image and sometimes move objects within the frame as well. Makes you wonder what the world is like if these objects have a significance when they are in the presence of each other, and what that significance would be.

Final Images

Prompts in order from top to bottom: Photobooth, Snapshot, Advertisement, Postcard.

The photobooth is of my friend Jordan - we had the idea to take a bunch of snapshot of him and roll them all together to make an interesting stop-motion film. The high contrast keeps the small images interesting, in addition to the variety of faces made.

The snapshot if of my friend's golden retriever, Mira. She is in the center of the frame, with a slightly unusual and unplanned crop. She is not looking at the camera.

The advertisement is featuring my friend Rebecca and the hat that I knitted for her. If I were to do this differently I would have gotten together with her again and take more up close shots of just the hat and maybe of some knitwork that is in progress.

The postcard is featuring the train system in Chicago, Illinois. I gave it a older feeling by increasing the amount of darks in the photo and then lightening the darks themselves.