Final Evaluation

The Final Evaluation of my 

"Same So Different" 

Series

Over the course of this project I had changed my ideas from Portraiture to Landscape.  This is something I do not normally do and wasn't so sure if it was going to work, but throughout my research, understanding and ability to overcome problems I managed to come away with a reasonable project.  My original ideas were to stay working with people, portraits and the human body.  A lot of what I was shown in my lectures was landscape based and I still found all of it fascinating, but at the start was adamant of working with portraiture still, to fit with my running ideas. One idea that I have had from the beginning is this movement of the 'deadpan photograph' which is something I have carried out throughout the project. After looking through all work shown and researched for my lectures, my interest for landscape in this particular topic grew more appropriate.  I decided to run over any ideas that I had before that I always wanted to try out and to see what would fit into this project, my Twins idea was something that I really wanted to carry out for this project, an idea of a deadpan shot of 6 pairs of twins stood in there casual daily dress/clothes, probably outside their house.  This was possible as i had listed 5 pairs of twins I knew and could have asked around for another, the problem with this project was timing.  I had let myself run out of time and was not able to use my time going round to all different places to take the shots.  I had other possible idea's, and at this point was still looking for people to use as the topic. 

I had reached a point in the project where I was still looking for possible ways the shoot a deadpan portrait but was also looking into research from New Topographics and Dusseldorf which mainly subjected Landscapes, on the side so that my options were open still, writing about all the different genres that include deadpan so that I could change to a different genre but keep with my theme throughout.  

For my major practical and mixed media modules I have been working with pole fitness and it plays a big part of both projects, I thought that I would be able to include this in link with this project.  My ideas were to go to the Pole fitness Classes and to take a still expressionless portrait in the style of famous 'deadpan portraiture' photographer Rineke Dijkstra, and have a shot of the diversity of the students that go to the new 'craze' of pole fitness, I wanted to capture the exhaustion after effect of the lessons, and hopefully have that show in the models face but still expression less like Dijkstra'a series 'New Mothers' but also capture the blank expressionless, no emotion look shown in Thomas Ruff's portraits, I had idea's of taking the shot either outside the building or just in an empty space in the room.  This idea would have been what i wanted to do the most, but I ran late on timing and thought that it would take a bit too long to set up studio at the class, I also wanted to change and work away from the portraiture, this is where my ideas changed from portraiture to landscape. 

The landscape option was to show some difference within my work, I looked at Lewis Baltz, Frank Gohlke, John Schott and then had the idea of "Same so different", which was the idea that I stuck with.  I wanted to show a series of images that had the same topic but with different outcomes along the project.  I looked into Gursky's gridline's, same gridlines in each image but images completely different,  Simone Nieweg's garden's same topic but each shot of a different garden can look so different from each other. After showing my hand made books and considering an idea that would fit into a book I decided against it and started thinking of my own ideas.  They started with my trampoline idea which I really liked because i thought that would be a perfect subject for showing the same but different, it would show the way in which different families live with the trampoline and how the 'garden' is such a family place, that it can show so much personality, all whilst sticking with my deadpan theme, and my same but different theme as each shot would have looked completely different. Other ideas included derelict Dartford, which I personally think would have been very interesting and would have fit perfectly to this module project, it would have been early in the morning showing deadpan empty images of the closed down and neglected boarded up buildings, but it wouldn't of had the same but different aspect to it unless I took the outside images of closed down building or building walls similar to Lewis Baltz's work. Which brought me onto my final idea. 

My final idea came from looking at the works of Lewis Baltz's industrial sites because he shot the 'same but different' aspect to my ideas and all shot as deadpan which is my other theme throughout the series, other inspiration was John Schott's route 66 series which again has the 'same but different' aspect of all the different motel styles and also deadpan shots.  Because of these two I had my idea of my area and gardens.  Once I knew I wanted to work with gardens, I looked into Simone Nieweg's images again and thought about the alley behind my road houses.  I planned out the area and what i was going to do really well and then went out early to shoot the series up the behind the houses, of a certain walk walk behind my own house. This automatically reminded me of Ed Ruscha's work because it is actually working with the same strip and literally moving along and shooting the same straight walkway. 

I am really happy with the way the shoot came out, but i knew that I wanted to display them in black and white to have a feel and sense of Baltz's and Schott's work within mine. I like that a lot of the spaces behind the houses and at the ends of gardens looked completely different because it fit with my ideas. 

Overall I think the planning up to my final idea was great an that my outcomes have worked in my favour to my two theme that I wanted to keep throughout.  My images are all shot with the 'deadpan aesthic' and definitely all fit into my theme of "Same So Different", all the spaces looked different some did not have garages and some were fully overgrown, I used images that were similar but still different for my finals in which I like a lot. The idea behind my images were to show that sometimes in landscape and property photography the deadpan image can reveal a sense and idea of who lives in the house and what personality they have, I wanted to try to make the difference of properties obvious but subtle at the same time. The negative to my images is how bright the sky was, in some, it looks a little too burnt out and too bright, but I am happy with how my project came along and think I worked greatly in the style to show an independent subject of art with a context of contemporary culture.  I have provided a critical understanding of theoretical practices and have shown questions of expression, representation and meaning and affect.  I have shown the relationship between form and content and issues of materialism, my photographic practice and work relates to my ideas the whole way through. I am happy with the outcomes, but should have arranged more time to concentrate on my original ideas. 

Final Image 6

This is the last and sixth image used in this short series.  I actually really liked this image due to there being less 'garage' and more plants, trees and nature. One of the meaning's behind this series is too look at the background of whether the image shows a persons personality.  You can tell that house's along here with big garages obviously have a lot to store indicating a big bust family, whereas the garden in this image probably belongs to an older couple who do not need as much therefore do not need a huge garage. I do not like the over blown brightness in the sky and this lets the images down but, the thing I like about this image is the big tree branch broken and falling in front of the garage, and also the darkness in the fence panels covering the trees.  The falling branch indicates the fact the garage has not been opened in a while, which shows that the different personalities can be shown through images like this series because the garages like my own (image number 2), is opened a lot of the time and this garage quite clearly hasn't and shows a sense of neglect.  Once again, the reason I think this image is strong is due to these personality facts stated. 

Final image 5

This fifth image is another of the favourites from the series and also one of the easiest to pick out and use in the selection and editing down process.  I liked the way that whole image was set out.  You don't really realise the brightness of the sky too much because the sky is covered by the tree and another building on the right, but parts of the tree branches are blown out in which I am not happy about, but apart from the sky, I think the overall look of the image shows a deadpan aesthetic very well and  the way the building is quite small look good in the overall frame.  The previous images are bigger and was hard to get in frame but this fits well.  I like the fact the graffiti is covered the door, it brings out the real urban-ness and real urban-landscape feel to it.  You can also see how some of the house's along this strip have taken the back space of there house into consideration and cut the bushes down and the trees down where as some, like this image here have let all the back nature grow, and it gives the messy un used and neglected look to it which I actually think is what makes this image stronger. 

Final Image 4

This fourth image is my favourite image from this series. And as you can see, it is probably because of the broken down belongings just chucked out the back of the garage with the 'we'll sort it out later' attitude.  Like mentioned before, you really see how the back of the houses is not need to look great due to nobody being shown the back.  I like that this image has quite a lot in it.  You can see that this building is smaller than my previous images and here you can see two gates either side of the building, which proves the joint on effect of the strip.  I do think is it a shame that I could not get any further back to take these shots, because getting the whole of the roof in this photo would have looked better in my eyes, but it does give you a sense of size as well.  This would be an image to remind me of Lewis Baltz because of the closer in shot of the door, as the main focus.  The rubbish and old broken furniture is what makes this image interesting, it would have been nice to see another garage a long the walk also with some old belongings outside as it fits in with my meanings too.  Whether the looks of the property could show similarities in the person living there. 

Final Image 3

This third image is slightly different in size and shape.  Th garage is set further back meaning a smaller garden.  I wanted to show another garage that was similar to the first to but still have differences.  The biggest difference is the fact that its smaller and is all in frame.  Garages like this would have been there for a long period of time, you can tell this isn't new, because of colour, bends in the door etc, but the overall images reminds me of the work of Lewis Baltz but a little more in frame.  If I were to do the same project again but only keep in frame the doors themselves then it would have resembled Baltz's work even more. I like the light greys in the garage in contrast to my first image for example, where the greys on the door was very dark and near on blacks. I think the bright sky has complemented the overall image as there is not as much of the sky in frame, and the tree towards the left breaks up the difference from sky to simpleness 'deadpan' building.  

Final Image 2

This second image in the series is actually of my own house garage, and I think it's interesting to include my own 'back of house' image, because i can then get a reaction to what the project is about. Our garage is white, and has lots of graffiti written on the walls.  This obviously makes it looks quite bad and messy looking, but the feeing's i get and my family is that, there isn't a lot of need to make the back of the house so much presentable, because it's only for us to see.  In the basis of this project and showing the change and difference, you never really know, but in a few years, things may change and this could be re-painted to the brand new look, and might stay like it.  For the image purposes I actually like the fact it has graffiti on the walls, the same as the first image, the garage is large so was hard to fit the whole garage in shot.  Although this image looks as if it is wonky and off balanced, it actually isn't, all of the garages and sheds along this strip have been built on uneven grounds and are all different. 

The nothingness, deadpan aesthetic and simpleness of the look Im going for is conveyed and shown. 

Final Image 1

This was the first images along the strip alley walk that I chose for my final's, it was actually one of the garden garages that stood out to me.  It seemed different to all the others, maybe because it almost seems like a big barn house rather than a garage. I liked the deep dark vertical lines on the garage doors, this is probably because most garages have horizontal lines on them.  I was shooting at around 6.00AM, so the daylight was very bright, this is quite a bad thing because I have blown out quite a lot of the sky.  I don't think it matters that much considering that fact that the image is of the back's of the house's/end of gardens, and the image itself is quite dark, so therefore like sky being this bright makes up for the overall look of the image.  This garage is quite large and it was hard to get any further back due to the fence in the alley way.  I think it would have been nice to have the whole of both edges of the garage in but I also quite like that it shows its bigger.  The overall image shows nothingness, deadpan and recording something before change.

Rejected Work

So I had a final 8 images and thought that the finals were complete with this amount of images.  I think they flow well together and having some different compositional images within the set you can see how different the backs of houses can be, but with this I wanted to make sure I stuck to the exact brief which  is to only have a final 6 images.  For this i needed to cut two images out.

Here at the top are the two rejected images.  I think that individually, each image could say a lot about the way the back of the house is presented and how the idea of a personality given can be seen within these images.  I personally like these top two images when individually.  I like hoe the graffiti and the broken fence panels show such a difference to what the front of house would and also of how different they are next to each other.  The reason the are not in the final six is because they are the images that stand out as different now.  Although the series is not called 'garages' or anything, the other houses show the garage, where as these do not, so stand out can when removed from the final six make a noticeable difference.

>     REJECTED WORK     <

 So above shows the two rejected images from the final 8 that I had, and here below are the final 6 images.  It is a selection of the best and most deadpan images out of the whole series of images from the back alley. I have narrowed all my images to these final 6 images.  I would like to think that I have managed to convey the "same so different" aspect to my images, I wanted to resemble images from photographers series that I have looked at from the New Topographics and Dusseldorf School of Photography.  I was able to recreate a bright nothingness image of some of the end's of gardens and have them placed next to each other like it's the same strip and all next too each other.

Although my "Same so Different" aspect would seem as if it doesn't show in my final six, because the three top images, for example are quite similar in the fact of there is a big garage - but it was also the fact of the Man Altered landscape that i wanted to show here.  I wanted to show how they are each different to each persons living in the house, but the change will happen, in 10 years from now these could change, now owners means new change.

Final 8 Images

Here are the final 8 images that I have chosen to show, I know I should technically be cutting two more images away from this set, but I wanted to put all of them in because, one of my main ideas for this project was to show the differences between each other the behind the house's and my aim was to see how different they are to see if could say something about the people that own the property.  

I have called this series "Same so Different" because each made man, garage and fence, was placed where the owner of the house wanted it.  I like that they are each different, I know some areas of new house's which all have the exact same garage space and back of house that they all look too similar, with these, you really see how some people need big garages and other do not really have a garage but a shed or tool shed.  I do think that they lack 'something' that I think they need, but they are a group of totally deadpan images which is what I wanted.  

I like how some of the images that I have chosen seem to have the neglected effect to them.  There is Graffiti on a few of the wall and doors, but this gives the impression and idea, that family's try so hard to make the front of their house look good so that visitors get a good first impression, but it makes me question, if these images were displayed in a panorama similar to Ed Ruscha's sunset strip, would it make them want to spend some time sorting out the back of the house ? Probably not because it is the back of the house and no one really needs to see it.  I do like this short series of images but I do believe I could have worked a lot harder on actually producing the final images themselves.

I have a final 8 here, so technically need to take out two images, if I were to take some out it would be the two bottom row right images. because they are the images that do not have an actual garage in frame and therefore are the different ones.

William Christenberry

After I had shot my images, I saw that William Christenberry had some images that had a resemblance to the ones I had just taken.  He said that as photographer, he took photographs of things that stood out to him.  He recored something that was going to be changing through time. 

The fact the his images show, these old style wooden huts and houses, makes my images look quite similar.  Maybe the light and time I went wasn't the best, If I had gone round the back of the house once the sun was out, I could have had maybe better colouring in the images and could have displayed them similar to these images here. 

The fact that the roofs of the houses/huts in these images go to a point is what I noticed the most in these images along with mine.  There are a few images of mine that look similar.  The main different is that these images have a lot more space around them.  If my project was bigger I could show more back of house from say I completely different road, one of much smaller house and smaller gardens and the in contrast I could have taken a road with huge house and huge gardens. 

I like how my images do show the differences from one another, kind of similar to the four images on this post.  They are all similar and are all of the same topic of huts/houses along the road, but look very different from each other.  I likt that one image has a car in it, because the images I have taken show garages which have cars inside but, the cars were not visible. 

Editing Down From the Shoot

With the help from my family, I narrowed down the 184 images from the whole shoot down to the best image from each house and each back of house, this brought me down to only 26 images anyway, which is what I averagely guessed for the house that are along the road with the alleyway back of house.  26 images was still too many so i cut out images that didn't look interesting and looked a bit too bland.  Remembering that what I was trying to convey was how each are of the same thing but all completely different.  

 These images are all in Colour at the moment by I know my final images and final set will be black and white.  I looked through them altogether like Ed Ruscha's strip work and the only way that it would work if I was behind the fence in the heath because there were some garages that I could not get further back to take the whole shot.   It was a very bright morning and the sky was a bright white, this is quite bad in the fact that it overexposes very easily and also because it can almost be too white, So as long as I choose the images with the most going on then the sky will not be that noticeable.  The blandness, expressionless and deadpan image is what I was going for and I think I definitely have that in my images, now to see what they look like black and white.

Contact Sheets

The Shoot

I managed to shoot this a lot quicker than I thought I would. I woke up very early in the morning and went to photograph with that assistance by my mum.  We left early because I didn't want to get really harsh lights but wanted it to be the best exposure so that I could see everything.  I liked the idea of this shoot but it was a lot harder than I though to stand back and take the images, there were a lot of overgrown trees, bushes an mounds that i had to lean against to tray and get as far back as I could.  

The ally way is not that long at all and when taking images directly onto each back of house, it moves along the strip quicker than I thought, I came away with 184 Photos overall.  Some could say this was a lot but I was trying different lighting setting for each house I was at to try and get the best of each of them.  Here are my contact sheets of all the back of the houses along my road.  I do think it was quite interesting how some images looked like they linked on and some images individually didn't even look like it was the same area.  Take a look at all of the un-edited photos taken below;

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Edward Ruscha

Ed Ruscha's book "On the sunset strip" works really well with the idea that I am now creating - the strip along the back of my houses could potentially get put into a book exactly the same as Ruschas.  I said that I would consider a book after I made one in class, this could be the perfect option for displaying my final series of images of the "backs of peoples gardens" for my series "Same So Different". I am happy with my idea now i just hope it turns out ok.  But I also like the idea that my garage set of images could slide out next to each other like Ruscha's book below;

This book has a series and similar theme which is of 'Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966).  He has documented and displayed a panorama style type image along the whole strip, probably complied of separate images. The only text involved throughout the book is the name, title and date. 

I really like the idea that mine had compared to Rusha's, it looks like mine could be placed as a strip too. It is a project that will make the viewer have to go to the ned images to see how the end of the line plays out compared to the first. 

I like that my idea has fit well into the New topographics that I looked at originally and still sticks to my theme of taking images of the same thing with so every one looks different still.  I could fins that my images are nothing like this series and have no interest but its worth the try to see what it will turn out like.  I like that I am also using a street that I live on, which mean that the series of images will mean something to me as it will hold my house within the images.