Surrealist Work

Here are (a recap for those who have followed this blog for a while) some of my favourite conceptually motivated university projects. I blogged about most of these projects when they were in the early working stages and if you would like to see those early experiments please feel free to look back through the posts here.

www.sammisparke.com

Surrealist Work

In the final year of my degree my work began to move in a Surrealist direction. This was partly influenced by the research I conducted while writing my dissertation, 'How did Surrealism help cultivate some of the most important female artists/photographers of the early twentieth century?' 

However, this Surrealist aesthetic continues still to influence and inspire my work. It is a style I am very interested in borrowing from in future projects.

The work here was produced at the beginning of the Object to Subject series which was a key 3rd year project. You can see this work is surrealist in style yet the project Object to Subject was not. This is because as the Object to Subject work progressed the surrealist aesthetic i'd been working with no longer seemed suited to the concept and actually interfered with a clear reading of the works in which I was trying to convey emotion and illicit feelings of ‘empathy’ in the viewer.

So here are the first works from that lengthy project which I still adore and am actually quite proud of.

Object to Subject

Here are (a recap for those who have followed this blog for a while) some of my favourite conceptually motivated university projects. I blogged about most of these projects when they were in the early working stages and if you would like to see those early experiments please feel free to look back through the posts here.

www.sammisparke.com

Object to Subject is rooted in theories of the ‘the gaze’.

I began by exploring mechanisms that act to disrupt a straightforward sexual reading of the female nude. After much research and experimentation I came upon the idea of emotion (the nude expressing strong and recognisable emotions) as a means of subverting a sexual reading of my model. The theory plays out that when the viewer sees an emotion in a stranger, an emotion they recognise, empathy takes place. In this case, after empathy is elicited, viewers who were once inclined to view the nude as a sexual object are much more inclined to view her as a subject or personality. The relationship between viewer and nude is fundamentally changed as the nude morphs in the mind of the viewer from object to subject.

The images use the backdrop of the home as a stage to position this narrative of emotion. Each of the images portrays a different emotion, however certain emotions may be interpreted differently by individual viewers as sometimes happens in life. The images are loosely sequential and if read as they are numbered will hopefully convey a story of emotion. In addition to this camera angles were used deliberately to enhance the impact of the emotions conveyed.

Object to Subject: moving direction

Ok, as much as you, and I, loved the experimentation with Surrealism I'm going to have to put it on hold with this project and concentrate on the side of 'Object to Subject' which looks at human emotion.

I'd lost my way a bit by going down the path of visual techniques as a way of subverting a sexual reading of my nude. There was nothing wrong with this per-say but it was too far removed from my initial goal which was to get the viewer to stop engaging with my model as a sexual object and start engaging with her as a person.

Now i'm using emotion on its own to create this affect. I'm taking my model through a journey of emotions with the hope that people will empathise with her and what she is feeling rather than just looking at her as a nude and a sexual being.

Here are some images from yesterday's shoot that i won't be using but convey where I'm heading:

Object to Subject:

Outtakes from todays shoot that I won't be using for a number of reasons, some because of the dimensions and others because they don't fulfil my criteria. But I like these images.

Object to Subject (in different approaches)

More from the same series. I've refrained so far from putting the more graphic images from the project on here.

Mainly because I'm still shooting and constantly in the process of making decisions about images that work and don't work....also I wanted to preserve my model's modesty- The only nudity I want to show here is nudity necessary to the meaning of my project.

Comments welcome.

Current project rejects: Object to Subject

Object to Subject is a project based on deflecting a sexual reading of the nude.

The idea is rooted in the theory of 'the gaze' as coined my Laura Mulvey.

In the project I use visual devices and mechanisms which I project onto my nude to subvert a sexual reading of her.

I began with using light and shadow which I will post later but my second shoot involved distortion of the body using mirrors or reflective material. Here are some images I won't be using but that I liked: