Found Objects session 3

I noticed this can on the railing on my way into Uni and thinking, what kind of person has done that? Either a very creative one or just bored, which is most likely the case. As soon as we were told that we were to photograph found objects this sprang immediately to mind and were keen to find it again, just to make sure no-one would throw it away. 

These are just a few pictures I took in situ.

Then I took it of the railing and brought it to the studio to try an get some forensic shots of it but they turned out a little bat artsy for me, I think it was because I was using natural light.

For the creative shots I was going to shine a beam of light through the hole in the middle, maybe it will have come out of the ring hole as well but I never got the chance to try it. I left it in the classroom over night with a note not to touch but the cleaners must not have seen it and threw it away.

Now I have to see what else I can find out there.

For research we were told to look up Irving Penn and his project on documenting the discarded cigarette ends of prostitutes.

Back in 1975 Irving Penn‘s collection of prints of discarded cigarette betts entered artistic folklore when they were snapped up by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But these were no mere snapshots of cigarette butts; Penn had printed them using a very complicated technique, by carefully arranging and preparing each set before taking the shots and in doing so created iconic images, elevating the discarded butts to a far higher status.

Until 17th August

Hamiltons Gallery,13 Carlos Place, London, Greater London W1K 2EU

www.hamiltonsgallery.com

In the end, many of my favorite Penn photographs weren’t portraits at all. His images of cigarettes stood out to me as alchemical: lead into gold. Szarkowski had a theory about them: “The lipstick on the dead cigarette butt, the beetles, flies, stains, mice, raveled carpets and moldering walls that recur with such frequency in Penn’s work might be explained as a quiet dissent from the general model of perfect elegance that prevailed at Vogue during Penn’s early years there.” His still lives attempted something else. They gave form to his painterly ambitions by not relying on the camera alone, but on principles of art. They sought to arrest time’s movement, to preserve life’s color from decay simply by lending living things, through surprising placements and pairings, the soft touch of eternity.


and to look up what Andy has done to give an example of forensic photography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewfphoto/sets/72157621447364986