Week 7 - Museum Trip 2 Research and Photographic Response

We met with Sarah Powell, Rights Specialist, Auckland Museum.

Copyright law grants the owner of the copyright exclusive rights to certain restricted acts, which include the following.

copying the work
publishing, issuing or selling copies to the public
performing, playing or showing the work in public
broadcasting the work
making any work derived or adapted from the copyright work.

 We then met with Shaun Higgins with the F4 Art Collectives.Like many museums, Auckland Museum is dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing the past through its objects, texts and photographs.
Within the histories these things embody, great events and deeds are memorialised and when it comes to people, photographs play a very special role. For here is a truly remarkable likeness of the person captured as if in a magic mirror. The person in the image and the material object that is the print are locked together for as long as the material lasts, their fates indissolubly entwined where a family re-enacts and documents an imagined past in order to investigate representation. Without clear boundaries to define their world the gulf that separates them from their personal histories, has created an incomprehension they struggle relentlessly to overcome, as if one sense has failed, and the other four cannot attune to the loss.

Unidentified opaltype portrait. Hand painted highlights.

The Unknown Woman, is a photographic portrait that has been almost entirely eliminated by hand painting, the only part of her image that remains steadfastly photographic is her ear.

 Unknown Opalotypes

Printed on opaque milk glass, opalotypes, which emerged in the 1860s,present a portrait on a white ground. The positive image was printed from a negative after a light-sensitive coating was applied to the white glass surface.

To further enhance the image, painted details were often added to colour the sitter’s garments. In some cases the latent image is almost completely obscured, or painted out.

Glass opalotypes are fragile, and it is not uncommon to find them framed or adhered to a backing board.

Curator of Pictorial, Shaun Higgins began to noticed the reappearance of one person In the AWMM’s Kelsey Photographic Collection. This unknown man appears again and again, he poses wearing different guises and in different tableau, as well as in a ‘candid’ image hiking in the snow.

Many of Kelsey’s photographs are landscapes, but this set of images are whimsical, clearly set up in a studio they have been planned and executed with care. The image of the man in the rain has even been augmented – the glass plate appears to have been deliberately spattered with a dark inky substance that has been wiped away very carefully over the man’s face so that he is clearly visible.

Staged photography formed a vital part in early photographic production, ironically, often as a strategy for achieving higher degrees of realism due to the awkward nature of the technology.

Unknown Portraits from the Kelsey, H. H. Photographic Collection 1907 – 1920 – Silver gelatine, Support Glass.  Click on image to view individually.

A page from an album of visiting cards. You would leave your photograph, as a calling card when you wanted to arrange to visit someone. Albums of filled with small unidentified portraits, the cards also collected by someone unknown as a memoir to social transaction and etiquette.

Using collage, montage and digital alteration F4 are insinuating relationships between their work and the chosen photographs, often combined to make a tableau , the images are arranged in a manner that hints at an encounter, thus emphasising and extending the disconcerting nature of their anonymity.

      

Gerald E Jones Cyanotype  1880 – 1963

Male theatrical figure.

Unknown Cyanotype

Characterised by their unusual colouring, these Prussian-blue prints are derived from a solution of iron salts that allowed the cyan colour to emerge when exposed to light through a contact negative. The deep blues of a cyanotype present a distinctive view of the world and a tantalising alternative to black and white tones.

This 19th century process was used for many decades to reproduce architectural drawings, commonly known as blueprints. The colour embedded in the paper’s fibres with no photographic surface as such, leaving a very matte finish. Paper could vary from home-made to commercial.

Cyanotypes were often made as experiments as the image will print out from light alone, allowing for the creation of sun prints and photograms which develop in front of the viewer

                                                   F4: The whisperer. The Unknown 2016

MY RESPONSE

Im responding to Gerald E Jones
Gerald Edgar Jones of Auckland (F.R.I. B.A.). Born Wellington 29 August 1880. Elected Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, London, 9 December 1912. Senior partner of the firm of Jones and Palmer Architects. Exhibitor at the London, Paris, Berlin, and American International Photographic Salons.

For my response i used camera raw to give that characterised Prussian-blue prints that Gerald Edgar used which were derived from a solution of iron salts that allowed the cyan colour to emerge when exposed to light through a contact negative. The deep blues of a cyanotype present a distinctive view of the world and a tantalising alternative to black and white tones.I see a man and the title itself says ''MALE THEATRICAL FIGURE'' which has another meaning in which i think Gerald is trying to portray his sexuality, he could be homosexual and with the models expression as if hes hurt.

Gerald E Jones Cyanotype  1880 – 1963

Male theatrical figure.

F4 RESPONSE

For my photography response which has nothing to do with the male theatrical theatre ut using F4 technique. I played around with different blue hues to try and capture the similar blue tone Gerald used and using the F4 technique which i really like, as seen here a finger with a string attached to it but i actually like how my image turned out.I placed a bright pink bracelet around my pointy finger using my white pillow as a background. I used a narrow depth of field and flash was fired because this was shot at night.

This is my husbands finger using the same bracelet but as seen here the bracelet is pushed inwards the hand is placed on the right .

Using an image of my son i played around with camera raw under HSL tab i pushed the blue slider to the left to get this effect.

I like how the yellow blanket stands out with the blue

Add caption

I really like this image because you can see pinkish tones around his lips.