conceptual – Fiona Macphee

Semester 2 – Advertising Module

January 2017

Task is to take an ordinary mundane, everyday object and put some extra into the ordinary. I got a plastic cup; ordinarily used for vending or dispensing hot drinks, water, refreshments et al. Create a series of images that could be used in an advertising campaign, albeit without the text, either studio shot or a location of your own choice. Respond to the challenge like it was an advertising brief and in addition collaboratively assist others in the production of their objects; a yellow rubber glove, plastic hook, yarn of wool and a washing up brush. Simples.

On the day of the brief we were given the opportunity to be spontaneous and inventive with our objects, much more difficult than you would have thought, as can be seen from the above images!

February 2017

Powerpoint presentation ( PPCup ) to pitch some ideas, including; Idea 1: Creation of work for a magazine similar to the New Scientist, Planet Earth, The Marine Biologist and the environmental impact of plastic cups; create scupltures of sea creatures (studio) by melting the cups, using fairy lights to enhance/add to the creation.

Idea 2 was to create portraiture using myself and fellow students, studio based.

Idea 3; to take object to outside space and attempt to be inventive with its use.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

My presentation was shown to the group by fellow student AM; I subsequently delivered the presentation for his hook ideas. Feedback and ideas discussed and I decided to go with portraiture initially and then perhaps the outside location in addition.

February 2017

1st Shoot Contacts from the shoot in February; opted to go for black and white; simple object and simply lit. Thinking about tension; the push and pull; in someway wearing the object creatively.

As I am in the below images with student AM the shots were taken by another student, RR.

March 2017

2nd Shoot I am not sure where this next idea came from; somewhere subliminal, no doubt from the chemical intoxication that’s going on in my life just now. I had melted a cup to see what it looked like back in February and loved the shape it became so I had kept it amongst the objets d’art that emerge from various projects. I like the idea of the cup becoming the light and thought this would work well as it was white and opaque. I had intended to use another student to be in the shoot but it evolved into just being myself and having students AM and IC assisting in the creative revolution that was occurring! Small thing; I love the way the light highlights the fingertips on the hand holding the melted cup. Electricity, light? I am almost seeing a religious connotation in the chosen two images in a strange way, maybe its the poses, hence my caption of a quote by American scholar and myth studier Joseph Campbell.

5portrait — **“What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?”** Joseph Campbell

3rd Shoot During discussions about research and ideas for our projects we were shown the work of photographers published in Ordinary Magazine, which is a quarterly fine art photography magazine “featuring over 20 artists from around the world who are sent one ordinary object, which comes as an extra, to make it extra-ordinary”. Issue No.4 was socks and this must have been embedded in my mind as this next shoot evolved similarly.

Again, its that tension element mentioned early on in the project. Student IC donated her lovely feet for use in these images. I wanted to get sock marks embedded onto the bare skin of the ankle but they were not obvious as were not tight enough once removed.

April 2017

4th Shoot I subscribe to Lens Culture which is great for seeing a huge variety of work from emerging and established photographers. Annelie Vandendael (Lens Culture Emerging Talent Award 2016) and her project Sois Belle inspired this next shoot. The use of colour in her images tempted me to stay with the blueness of the original images but ultimately I felt I should stick with the black and white theme I have chosen. Although I could envisage the blue one used for a bottled water campaign, possibly not!

I had the assistance of AM taking the images as I was yet again in them. The images without the hands holding them are the strongest and work better.

May 2017

Little bank holiday trip to Eastbourne and along came the cup. Tried a few seaside location shots but ultimately they needed quite a lot of refinement/re-shooting and time being close to final project submission I decided not to pursue them. I have put the images on with several favourites.

5th Shoot Referring to shoot one about creatively wearing the cups in some way led to this final shoot using IC as model and AC and MS assisting with the fan, lighting, model making, etc. Referencing the Apple iPod advertisements and using the cups to imitate the headphones works really well, very happy with the final images and this one was a great team effort as well.

Chosen3 — “Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

An additional shoot was done using a gas mask and the cups were the canisters that are usually placed on either side of the mask. I can’t show them here as they are not appropriate but they are in the project submission itself. In the meantime here is a picture of something similar, in fact its a Swedish civil defence Forsheda NBC F2 A4 Gas mask & filter!

This blog post is part of the submission for Advertising Module, Semester 2, BA (Hons) Photography documenting visual overview of methodology of final outcome.

Often many contemporary photographers are intrigued solely by the characteristics of the photographic medium itself. Consequently, they acquire a unique style through image manipulation, pushing the boundaries of the physical image and largely exploiting its role as a factual representation of time. In considering this for the Meaning and Message module we look to consider the nature of the photograph – breakdown, enhance and intervene with these key components. Investigating the following themes; intending to work with one I have unintentional encapsulated several for this project.

1 – Illusion 2 –Memory 3 – Flatness 4- Tactility

Initially, raiding the dark room for other students test strips and discarded film I worked on using these appropriated images by interweaving them with my own to capture an alternative “consciousness”, both real but imaginary; illusion and memory.

The slight deviance came after, due to personal circumstances and I embarked on a slightly different route. In January my hair fell out due to chemotherapy treatment and I decided to collect it in a plastic bag, not entirely sure why at the time but each night I would gather it in little piles in the living, bathroom and dressing table. Anyway, my hair having always been short was no good to knit scarfs with so I decided to be creative and use the photogram technique in the darkroom and scanned the results, I mixed some water on some of the slides for some extra texture and manipulated them by layering in photoshop.

I then embarked on series of self portraits through a glass door; losing your hair in a short space of time is a traumatic experience, particularly when it falls out in patches and its quite freaky and hard looking at yourself without being over emotional, but that’s allowed I say! I had at this point decided to shave it all down so at least there was some length cohesion going on, i.e. a millimetre or two. Must say that I do quite like it and at least my head shape can pull it off, when I put some make up on I think I look pretty fierce, you can see my 24-hour project for that.

To finalise the images I used both the photograms and the portraits and created multiple exposures in photoshop.