For this assignment, our group took turns uploading pictures to an ‘Image Circle’, whilst carefully selecting a variety of photographs, movie stills, and paintings, that each respond to the preceding images. Since other students were initially reticent at taking part, I began our project with a black and white photograph of Milan Cathedral from 1960, which features a silhouetted figure standing on a lonely street as heavy mist envelops the distant church spires and ominous gothic architecture. The darkly sinister portrayal of religious symbolism appealed to me, and I hoped that this particular shot would inspire Hoi Man because he enjoys vintage film photography, and in her notable collection of essays, ‘
On Photography (1977)’, the influential American critic Susan Sontag (1933-2004) explained how the mystical power of images can pierce the picture plane’s Modernist veil and engulf viewers, ‘The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.’ However, we hadn’t yet chosen a concrete posting order, so Keya decided to go next and clearly chose to focus on the physical composition by uploading her own colourful version of the same structure, albeit covered in glittering crystals and captured with a modern digital camera, which breaks through all illusive mystery and reveals the cathedral’s true size in relation to nearby buildings. What followed after was a series of classical paintings that allude to lavish royalty and aristocratic portraits until Ana posted a shot of children lying in a floating bed. This whimsical composition reminded me about the classic movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, ‘
James and the Giant Peach (1996)’. I chose one frame from a particular scene where James and his grasshopper companion are both covered with sticky fruit pulp, deep inside their flying peach. The fantasy movie theme then continued with Keya’s shot from ‘
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)’ that also features giant bugs and stop-motion animated creatures. Gradually the images drifted towards urban landscapes with Arthur’s new-wave Japanese street and Ana’s painting of an Algerian port. These inspired me to post a screenshot from one of my favourite video games, '
Overwatch (2016)'. I chose this particular map, ‘
Ilios Well (2017)’ because it’s a cultural reference to the Greek island of Santorini that’s full of scenic villages with idyllic white-washed houses, and blue-domed churches. Nevertheless, the game studio’s designers took some obvious artistic liberties when creating this digital world, by emphasising these unique architectural aspects and subsequently including their own sculptural homage to the historic ‘
Colossus of Rhodes (280 BC)’. The delicate blue/white colour palette was definitely noticed by Keya, and the ambulance interior she selected was an interesting variation on the subject matter, whilst remaining aesthetically consistent. Unfortunately, these vivid hues were quickly conquered afterwards by monochrome figures and static objects, until eventually the two images prior to mine were both simple photos of ordinary wine bottles. However, they strongly reminded me of neoclassical still-life paintings and I suddenly recalled another Sontag comment about subjective merit, ‘To photograph is to confer importance. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects.’ This inspired me to take a slightly different approach by posting a Picasso painting of similar content, ‘
Table in a Café (1912)’ albeit with an avant-garde Cubist twist that reduces the natural form of Ana and Arthur’s bottles to their geometrical equivalents whilst simultaneously depicting them from a multitude of viewpoints. Although it was a risky manoeuvre the results soon became obvious as each subsequent student began posting a much greater variety of objects in vastly different contexts.
Reference List
Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Available at: http://www.lab404.com/3741/readings/sontag.pdf [Accessed 02 Jan. 2020].
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