A Passport selfie

I had to renew my ten year passport and it is now possible to apply online and provide a digital photograph created by the applicant, this can be made with as little as a mobile phone and a plain background. Unfortunately, I don’t have a mobile with this ability; so I used my DSLR and

Between The Eyes, Essays on Photography and politics.

Between The Eyes, Essays on Photography and Politics, (2005) by David Levi Strauss, New York: Aperture. ISBN: 978-1-59711-214-7. Strauss looks at how politics has influenced art taking examples of the Vietnam war, San Salvador, The Gulf war, Rwanda, 911, etc. Notes. Journalists working for the largest news media outlets in America operate under the institutional

Sexuality, Documents of Contemporary Art.

Amelia Jones, (ed.) (2014) Sexuality, Documents of Contemporary Art, London: Whitechapel Art Gallery. ISBN: 978-0-85488-224-3. This book is a collection of essays and interviews. Many of the artists are involved in performance art in which they will either perform in front of a live audience or video their work. Much of the discussion is in

Reading Photographs – In Our Own Image, by Fred Ritchin

Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips created the image, titled: Photo Op, in 2005. From Fred Ritchin’s book, In Our Own Image, his essay, Reading Photographs, (Ritchin, 2010) discusses the authenticity of a photograph. He asks, …after all that is happening in computer imaging can one safeguard the integrity of the photograph in its populist role

Pablo Picasso & George Braque’s artist’s statements.

I couldn’t find a formal manifesto by Pablo Picasso and George Braque but I found these artist statements: “Cubism is not a reality you can take in your hand. It’s more like a perfume, in front of you, behind you, to the sides, the scent is everywhere but you don’t quite know where it comes

Self Image, Personal is political (1979) by Angela Kelly

Women’s Identity (1975 – 1979) Angela Kelly This essay, Kelly examines the use and mis-use of self portraiture, to quote Kelly: to determine what relevance a seemingly private practice has to a public audience. (p.410, Wells, 2003). Kelly suggests in her essay, that at the time of writing, self-portraiture had not been properly analysed. As

The ‘Mona Lisa’ by Leonardo da Vinci 1503/06 – 1517

Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (1503/07 – 1517) This portrait is now probably the most famous portrait in the world. Painted by Leonardo da Vinci, he started painting this from around 1503 – 06 and is believed to have continued working on it until as late as 1517, close to his death. It is

Reflection point – seeing ourselves through technology

As Jill Walker Rettberg in her book​ ​Seeing Ourselves Through Technology​ says, ‘[p]erhaps the reason we feel the need to take another, and another selfie, is in part that we, as the surrealists wrote in 1928, never seem able to create a photo that will ‘fully correspond to what you want to see in yourself’’’ (Walker Rettberg,

Exercise 3.1 – Your Selfie

A new portrait for my Facebook page. To obtain this picture, I took 120 shots. My problem was that I cannot see myself and although the other shots were mostly in good focus and exposure, my positioning was wrong, I had the wrong expression or I just did,’t like it. This was I thought the

Thomas Ruff

Portrait 1986 (Stoya) Photo by Thomas Ruff, Tate Collection. Reference: P78091 Display Caption – Tate Ruff believes that photography can only capture the surface of things, conveying what he describes as ‘the authenticity of a manipulated and prearranged reality’. In 1981, he began a series of colour portraits of his friends and fellow students at