EXPERIMENTATION: Wire

I went down to my local skip this weekend and decided to collect some rubbish to photograph, to see if I formulate any ideas as to what I want to photograph for this project. I found some old wire that was used in a garden, and decided to take it home and form my own studio to capture it. For these images, I was heavily influenced by macro photography, and way the light fell onto the wire, causing beautiful highlights and shadows. I wanted to capture the beauty within this discarded object, and bring it a new purpose.

EXPERIMENTATION: Scanography #2

After researching into the work of Kevin Newark, I decided to conduct some initial experimentation into how I could create beauty from items that were considered to be rubbish. I obtained some bin bags from work, as I felt the clear material would scan better, and produce a more interesting and artistic body. Overall, I am relatively pleased with the results, and feel that emulating the work of Kevin Newark further, and experimenting with different techniques of ways to capture rubbish as art, will be especially helpful in helping me think of a more in depth idea and concept for my Negotiated Major Project final piece. 

"On Ice" by Janet Dywer

Janet Dwyer is a scanography artist who aims to explore the beauty within nature and create relationships between beauty and perfection. Her images are beautiful, and freeze nature in time using ice and photography.

"Scanography" by Stewart Nelson

Stewart Nelson is a fine art photographer who looks into scanography. My first experimentation of scanography was a great success, so I have decided to some more research into scanography as an art form.

Although Stewart has scanner flowers, to make them into a form of art that looks beautiful, I will be staying on the side of photographing items of rubbish and belongings that are old and dated. I feel this will open my ideas and help me create a well informed series for my project in the next couple of months

http://www.snelsonphoto.com/#a=0&at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=11&p=4

EXPERIMENTATION: Scannography

As initial experimentation, I decided to use my scanner to create scannography images of things I found around my room and in my pockets. I used this to gain an insight into what materials look interesting under the scanner and what did not look so good. I came to the conclusion that paper and plastic looks really interesting under the scanner, but the plastic can holder doesn't look good at all. It was too obvious that I was scanning rubbish, so I have decided to steer clear of it. I plan now to experiment more with scannography and invest in a handheld scanner to experiment with initially.

Kevin Newark

I discovered the amazingly inspirational work of Kevin Newark today, who explores the themes of "space, time, anxiety and displacement". His project consisted of him collecting numerous carrier bags from around East London and photographing them in an attempt to find "solace for the exiled soul of the plastic bag". Although his work explores how meaningless objects can become meaningful, and how there is no existence for plastic and other materials once discarded, it mainly looks into the fact that they are no longer in need for their sole purpose. His work is beautiful, bringing a breath of fresh air to the politics of consumerism and environmental damage. 

I am unsure of how his images are captured, and although probably not correct, I would guess that the images had been captured using the scannography technique based on the way the images are presented and the use of shadows, would be scannography. My interest in scannography has stretched back to my GCSE studies at high school, where I became obsessed with capturing the beautiful flowers that grew in my back garden on the scanner. I feel that scannography can open up a whole new aesthetic in image making, where dark and light in more defined in the photography. I plan to begin my experimentation by emulating the ideas that Newark had, by using refuse bags from my work place as a starting point.

(Upon further research and reading into this photographic series, I discovered his images were taken in water)

"7 Days of Garbage" by Gregg Segal

"Ever since I was a kid, I've wondered about garbage -  where does it go and what happens when we run out of places to put it? The average American generates 4 pounds of garbage a day. As a nation, we generate 4 million tons of waste, weekly. I'm concerned not only by how much we throw away, but by how blithe we are to the problem." (Gregg Segal, 2014)

I love the angle that these images have been taken from, paired with the meaning behind the  images of being a representation of how we are going to kill our planet if we carry on.