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.