Film Review.

Fasten (The Celebration).

Is a drama with an undercurrent of dark humor. Film touches on issues like child and spousal abuse, racism and revange. With time it shows how difficult can be to differentiate between love and hate.

One of the key elements of The Celebration is the style in which it is presented, called Dogme95 - movement of young Danish filmmakers who preferred simple production values and naturalistic performances.

Filmed using a hand-held camera with natural lighting, to make the viewer feel as a part of the movie action.

The occasion for the celebration is the 60th birthday of the patriarch, Helge, at the family-run hotel; attended  by family and friends.

One of the first scenes of the movie impress with its natural approach, when guests arriving for the celebration.

Scene look even too realistic, which makes viewer feel like he/she know that people.  

Everybody are smiling, laughing and welcom each other, as well as rushing around to get their room and just start celebration.

It’s like a situation from everyday life.

Birthday speech by elder son Christian, which makes uncomfortable silence.

Firstly guest around the table seems to be quite excited. But when speech gathers speed, situation in the room becoming really awkward.

Speech is to father, so mother stays in defense, putting her son in bad light. As some saying says: she is turning things upside down.  

This scene was captured and viewer can feel as a part of it with the intimacy of angles and easy frame cuts which works extremely well.

It is the first Dogme movie, which shows the best of the movement – realism. By use of natural lighting, no superficial actions or change of time and place. Without dramtic music or use of heavy production machinery.

It is simply approached, with minimalism, which make movie focused and basic.

H1D

Hasselblad H1D workshop

Gleaners

Jules Bretons 'Calling in the Gleaners'

Jean-Francois Millet 'The Gleaners'

Peter Henry Emerson 'In the Barley Harvest'

Henry Peach Robinson 'Figures in Landscape'

In those paintings I focused on the people hands. How painters represented them. 

Because of the fact that in the past people were not using protection for their hands.


Even on August Sander photograph of bricklayer; young man doesn't have and and protection. But because of that the picture is posed his hands, and not that important and they appears almost untouched by hard work.

Zwelethu Mthethwa

In my project I'm going to focus on the hands of Medway cleaning people. Nowadays they're using protection for their hands, but still I think is not enough and through their hands we can see that so hard work to tidy up what we messed up.

Also I looked at photographs from slum areas around the word and just cropped hand from there. To so how much they are damaged. 

People in the slums don't have any kind of protection. Starting from they living space, which is not stable at all and going to their body and skin.

All day, everyday they're working so hard, to go 'home' where everything is more than dirty. 

Alice in Wonderland Tutorial

Alice in Wonderland Tutorial Presentation



After tutorial... We have aloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot to do...
But anyway thank you Sam.

The Places We Live by Jonas Bendiksen

The Places We Live is a multimedia installation depicting 20 homes in four different slum areas in Nairobi, Mumbai, Caracas and Jakarta. 

But is not about extreme poverty, dirty spots or crime-ridden street corner. Bendiksen was looking for how people normalize these dire situations, how they build dignity and daily lives in the midst of very challenging living conditions.

In the project, he aske someone for each family to tell him about life around slum.

“We think of these areas as the dark side of town where one shouldn’t go. 

But normal families live there – they pay rent, 

send their kids to school and try to make the best of it.”

Installation challenges viewers to reflect on what it means to live in a city in the 21st century... Project brings the reality of these individuals into sharp focus.

Waste Not by Song Dong

Song Dong is an avantgarde installation artist from China. Conceptual interests are at the centre of his practice, which embraces photography, installation and video. Emerging from a strong Beijing-based avantgarde performance art community, Song Dong´s practice explores notions of perception, transience and the ephemeral nature of existence.

There is the skeleton of a wooden house, and around it lies a collection of utensils of all kinds, the residue of 50 years of a person’s life and indeed of 50 years of material culture in China. Put in rows on small ceilings or placed casually on the ground, on cheap bedside cabinets, on a simple wooden bed, on a kitchen fridge whose surface has flaked away and on chests whose drawers are missing, they are Mrs Song’s dearest possessions. For 50 years she has hoarded and added to them.

Here in a neat row are four televisions - one big and three small - red, pale yellow and grey. There are neckties, some of them still in transparent plastic envelopes; there are ten 10-litre oil flasks, handbags with or without ornament for festive or daily use; there is black synthetic leather; there are heaps of bottles and portable army-flasks, briefcases and suitcases. There are also the relics of childhood: a skipping rope, cuddly animals and a now legless doll. In one corner there are baskets made of plastic, raffia and metal and there are sieves. There are also bundles tied up with string, bundles of socks and sets of belts. On the installation’s rim there are wooden chairs in front of a fence of wooden boards from sets of shelves.

The installation is being shown for the first time in the West. The concept and multi-media artist Song Dong has sat among crates and bric-a-brac in the foyer of the House of World Cultures and spread the hoard out with his mother’s care. He grew up in the house next to this wooden frame in the heart of Beijing. The shabby borough was cleared away in time for the Olympics, but the government neglected to replace the old houses, so there is now an empty area.

(...)This pace leaves the older generation breathless. Grown up in poverty and having to make the most of few resources, it was used to recycling, re-allocating and saving utensils for future use. The socialist motto was: ‘Waste not’. The generation gap is wide.

Looked at from a personal angle, the installation documents the history of the artist’s family. Song Dong recalls: “Every resource should be used fully, and nothing should be wasted. This code served as the basis for my mother’s daily household operations. In my childhood memories, she always led a thrifty life, trying not to waste anything for the good of our family.” 

Song Dong objects to his contemporaries’ consumerism and prefers spiritual and artistic satisfaction. Indeed the installation ‘Waste Not’ deftly achieves several aims with a single stroke. Besides offering visitors a picture of Beijing life, it has relieved his mother of the dead weight of half a century and has done so without making her feel that her hoarding was futile. In fact her collection is now touring the world and bringing her son international acclaim.

Song Dong shows his family story, but I'd argue whit the subject of his work. Installation contains plenty of rubbish such as plastic bottles or empty tooth paste tubes. This is basically piece of garbage, which is not worth to keep. To see in gallery as well...

Casting #2

Casting Alice

Delicate girl, with pure look, smoth hair and evrything so perfec. Referencing to Alice created by Walt Disney. 

And other one; young rebel, totally messed up. 

"Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go wherever they want".

hand study

Hand Study.

Leonardo da Vinci

reading. praying for hands

• Palmistry

Caravaggio, 'The Fortune Teller', 1596-97

Hands are wonderful indications of your innerself. They show by their texture, shape and markings, every detail of yourself. No two hands are exactly similar.

The three major lines commonly seen are Life line, Head line and Heart line. They indicate the person's health, longevity, major characteristics, major changes in life etc. Other many minor lines are also to be studied well for proper understanding of a person's fate and character.

Contemporary hands by Harold Olejarz

"I made it with my own two hands." This is a phrase that, at one time or another, all of us have spoken or heard. It implies a pride in our ability to fashion something. It indicates both a mastery of materials and a mastery of our hands. In this series of images, my two hands are both the subject and the instrument, the fashioned and the fashioner.

In his pictures her shows hand from different way. They are deformed, but obviously by digital manipulation.

Dharavi Slum

Dharavi, heart of Bombai.

Some interesting/terrifying info:

Population In Bombay: 24mln

55% of them lives in slums

Slums are 8% of city area…

Look so bad. But many articles says that most of those people are happy to live in there. Sound totally ridiculous but Indian people are really lovely and like to work and help each other. 

Looking at the pictures viewer can't say that at all... It's rather sad and kind of disgusting.

Time Machine: Venus vs Olympia

Sleeping Venus by is painted by the High Renaissance painter Giorgione.

Giorgione started painting it in just before he died in 1510 and it remained unfinished until Titian found it and completed it. Therefore many accredit both Giorgione and Titan as makers of the painting.

It features the goddess Venus reclining on the ground beneath a tree and. She is the goddess of love, beauty and fertility, and has been the subject for painters from the ancient Romans and Greeks and onwards. She is depicted as if asleep and unaware that someone is looking at her. This is one of the first paintings where a woman is the main focus and only subject. 

Olympia is an painting painted by Eduard Manet in 1863. The painting was inspired by Titian's Venus of Urbino, which in turn refers to Giorgione's Sleeping Venus.

It was first exhibited in 1863 in Paris Salon, France, and sparked so much controversy that it is said that it had to be moved to a less obvious location in the exhibition.  Viewers saw the oil painting as ‘immoral’ and ‘vulgar’, not because Olympia was naked, but because of her confrontational gaze  and numerous details identifying her as a courtesan, a high class prostitute.

Comparing the two paintings, the naked women are depicted in very similar poses, both stretched out on a blanket or cushion of some sort. Venus is asleep and appears to be unaware of the fact that she’s being looked at, whereas Olympia meets the viewer’s gaze directly and has raised her head from the cushion as if to get a better look at us. Her hand is also placed protectively above her crotch, which by the time was seen as vulgar. Venus, on the other hand, has positioned one arm around her belly, and the other one above her head in a very unnatural pose, almost as if she’s inviting us to look at her body, which makes the image more seductive. The fact that she’s asleep also means that the viewer can watch her without the awkwardness of having to face her gaze.

The idyllic setting emphasizes the fact that she is a mythical and idealized character, which makes her nakedness tolerable. In contrast, the details in the painting of Olympia (her bracelet, earrings, the orchid in her hair) identifies her as a high class prostitute, and as a real person rather than a generalized image of beauty. Olympia is also wearing slippers, indicating that she had clothes but took them off, as opposed to Venus who is naked by nature.

Sleeping Venus was one of the first paintings to have a naked woman as its main subject but there is another work of naked women that can be compared with two researched above areTitian’s painting ‘Venus of Urbino’ (1538).

A visual comparison of Titian’s work with Giorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’ makes it clear that Titian borrowed and visually quoted from Giorgione. From the neck down to the hips both artists Venus are the same. Also the faces are similar and poses are the same. The similarities, however, end there. Giorgione depicts Venus in the countryside, laying on the ground, with a crumpled sheet and two red pillows beneath her arm and and head that in this case is more similar to the representation of Venus in the painting by Manet.

Moreover, the painting by Spaniard Diego Velazequez is worth to look at. He had a different approach of Venus painting, it reflects the influence of reclining Venuses by Giorgione and Manet. This influence could easily be seen if one could take Valezequez’s Venus and turn her around. Basically the same general pose of Venus, with one leg tucked under the other, with Venus body fully exposed, however, turning her around he avoids Venus vulva to public view. He showed Venus on the side of modesty, by showing only the face of the model in the mirror.

To sum up; The two paintings one idealised, one realised; shows different ways of female representation.

Olypmia is a painting from 1863. In that time women had very little power, and one way they exerted what little control they could was by controlling the supply of sex, by making it available only with the precondition that it would lead to procreation, and therefore a respectable life as a mother and the support of a husband and community. She depicts a sexually attainable subject by virtue of its presentation.  But on one hand she is clearly represented as a human.

Colors and style of painting are even more realistic than in the Venus, so that the viewer assumes that this is a representation of a scene from the real world.

While the Venus encourages the fetishism of motherhood and procreation. Vensus is emphatically a goddess and depicted as goddess-like. Her body whose gentle curves echo the hill of the landscape behind and suggest some form of connection between the female depicted and nature.

Premanent Error

Rubbish. Trash. Refuse. Garbage. Junk. Litter.


Pieter Hugo, 'Premanent Error', 2010 

For the past year Hugo has been photographing the people and landscapes of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. The area of a slum called Agbogbloshie, is reffered to by local inhabitants as Sodom and Gomorrah, a vivid acknowledgment of profound inhumanity of the place. When Hugo asked the inhabitants what they called the pit where the burning takes place, they responded:

‘For this place, we have no name’.

In those more or less posed portraits he shows shocking 3^rd World, where people are burning electronic waste to get precious metals as a copper for example. This toxic fumes they create endanger both their own health and the environment.

Today’s electronic gadgetry is near obsolete within two to three years, creating some 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste per year. Much of that techno-trash is sold and (kind of) recycle in China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam and Ghana.

Photographs are carefully composed and cropped. Hugo spend long hours to get everything ready before the shot and after, he’s not using any graphic manipulations, but still his pictures looks ridiculously unreal. He shows different Africa, which is not a shock for him, cause he grown up there. Is a shock for European people who basically produce this waste.   

The Portrait Issue

Finlay MacKay, ‘Changing Pace, David Weir’ for ‘The Road to 2012’


He's known from his dynamic action photographs, group portraiture, street art, and illustration.


In 'Changing Pace' MacKay is one of commissioned photographers by London’s National Portrait Gallery to work on 'The Road to 2012', a 3year project that aims to highlight the journey to Olympic Games 2012. In the portrait of David Weir he photographs the paraolympic athlete at his traning zone. 


Camera position is set on the eye level to give a feeling that person in the picture is not different from us, beacuse of his disability.
Photographer used really fast shutter speed. Also there is large depth of field and viewer can see small details of the trees in the backgroud.
Probably picture is suported with artificial light.

Toby Glanville, ‘Actual Life’, 2002


Toby Glanville photographs people in their work place.  
Camera position is on the eye leavel which make neutral realtionship between model and viewer. 
Lighting in this photograph is natural, because of the sun reflecition on the green board. There is large depth of field.
Colors of the photographs are muted and makes a feeling that this picture looks like taken quite long time ago. 

Ulrich Gebert, ‘Freischneider’, 2004


Close-up portrait of a garden worker, wearing protection clothes. 
Camera position is set on eye level but model is not looking straight, which doesn't give any relationship between camera and photographed subject. 
There is shallow depht of field, which gives focus only on the worker. 


All of those photographers are dealing with normal, working people. They have different aproaches to their models. Photographs are respectful and giving neutral look. 
In  In Glanville's image, photographed person look into the camera, unlike MacKay and Gebert, where models look more busy and focus on what their thing. 
Also Glanville's portraits are surrounded by a feeling of stillness and calmness, totally opposite to MacKay's where picture is really dynamic.
Gebert in his work doesn't show working environment, he's concentrating only on the facial expression and props which build the picture.