'Georgia O'Keeffe painting sets auction record for female artist' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30142581)

Isn't this something, last Thursday a floral painting by the late Georgia O'Keeffe sold for $44.4m, setting a new record for the most expensive artwork by a female artist.  Full article here.

Exercise - Survival Programmes

'Exit Photography Group' was created by three British photographers Nicholas Battye, Chris Steele-Perkins and Paul Trevor. Their collaborative photographs from period between 1974 and 1979 were later published in 1982 under the title 'Survival Programmes in Britain's Inner Cities'. Eight magazine published an article based on this work marking its 25th anniversary and uplifting the question on the timeless quality of the issues raised by the photographers.

On the closer analysis of the photographs and the interviews accompanying the photo story, it is sad  to say that there has not been many improvements on the social situation of the lower class, often immigrants living in the UK. It seems the only obvious change are the different countries of origins where people came from to Britain. The trend had moved from the Jamaican pickpocketers to Eastern Europeans bag snatchers. I suppose there are not as many riots today as there where in the 70s/80s and there is a visible improvement on general living conditions, but with daily news on the migration increase and benefit cuts are we heading back to a similar climate?

Exercise - 'Documentary Photography' by Elizabeth McCausland

'Write a short bullet list of McCausland's main points in your learning log. Explain in your own words, in a single paragraph, why this article is relevant to this part of the course.'

• McCausland underlines the different genres of photography - the new world: the documentary photography; and everything before that, the traditional, expressionist photography: surrealism, photo secession and pictorialism. The latter group unfortunately in her opinion utterly useless in the assistance towards any social or economic improvements. 
• The old photography is compared to a pretty, subtle country side whilst the new wave of documentary photography is described as a medium that pictures life and excitement, in its pure state, without the need of retouching it.
• The main purpose of the document is to create the awareness, a concern, whilst the photographer task is to use his skills and imagination to 'find the significant truth and give the significant form'.
• The always present question of photography if the medium can be called art is also raised in the article. The writer argues that photography's main task is to be a recording tool, again criticising the turn of the century creative photographers, who were aiming at achieving impressionistic results. 
• Should the photography be seen as art, it has the responsibility of having a meaning, it must be able to communicate and speak to the viewer. The lack of communication and understanding seems it is long gone out of fashion.
• The photograph is no longer meant to beautify, it's not meant to improve on reality, it is in fact its responsibility to show the most horror of all truths.
• Lastly, the photographers themselves must have a clear purpose, they must be able to produce work that informs of social issues and makes us aware of the 'civilisation we live in'. Such work presents an actual reason, unlike the work based purely on personal expression.

McCausland in her 1939 article clearly emphases on the importance of a social document. The so called new wave of photographers working with realism covers the decades of a very difficult financial and social climate: 1st World War, Great Depression, the approach of the Second World War. With such photographers as Lewis Hine covering the subject of child labour and programs as Farm Security Administration tackling the issue of poverty during the great depression (with photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange), camera quickly became the tool of change. The b&w photography became the symbol of an ability to demand an improvement, to open the eyes and request a change to the difficult circumstances. The relevance of this article to this part of the course is therefore based on the emphasis of the importance of documentary photography, which in 1939 was only practiced in b&w (although the experimentation with colour film started years before).

Some kitchen stories

Beautiful caramelised red onions...YUM!

 

Embedding a PDF

A helpful tutorial on how to embed PDF files to your Blogger blog using Google My Drive https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/#my-drive
http://www.benschersten.com/blog/2014/04/embedding-a-pdf-from-drive-into-a-blog/

Assignment 1

I have finalised the set of 10 photographs, but still awaiting the delivery of the ink supply. I have also decided to buy more suitable paper, Pictorico Pro is just beautiful, but it does not do the justice to b&w. I have managed to successfully remove the reddish cast from my printed photos and have decided to print from Lightroom, which actually seems to give me enough control over the printing. I have given up Photoshop printing ages ago, as it never really made much sense with my setup, taking into account that I cannot use custom ICC profiles with my printer.

Urszula Jakubowicz

Documentary Photography

Student Number 501113

Assignment One – Local Communities

Produce a small photo essay of 10 images that demonstrates your engagement with the lives, experiences and histories of your local community and its people.

To meet the brief of this assignment I decided to photograph the Alderney Animal Welfare Society Jumble Sale, which aims at raising funds for this charity based organisation. Although I usually do not get myself heavily involved with the lives and events of the Island, this subject was the nearest to my heart and certainly it is the most honest account of my involvement with the community.

The local Jumble Sale in itself is quite an exotic event, it is the most bizarre 30 minutes one can experience, usually involving people fighting for second hand bargains. The event attracts all ages, all classes, people in need of something to wear, something to read or simply something to do on a Saturday afternoon. With this set of the photographs I wanted to showcase more than I ever experienced before during the Jumble Sale, my personal involvement (i.e. providing a cake for the cake sale), the preparations, the people helping to run the day, the gossiping, the variety of the characters the event seems to attract and the general atmosphere of the day. My day started at 10 am and finished at 16 pm, meaning that I was able to get to know the people involved with the event and therefore the process of the photographing was a pleasant experience for both, myself and my subjects.

For the project I used 23mm f1.4 Fujinon lens on my Fuji X Pro 1 and on camera bounced Nikon flash to just slightly lift the darker scenes. I chose to use higher ISO ranging between 1250 and 2500, as the lighting was tricky inside the very large room. I wanted to keep a larger depth of field and freeze the scenes with minimal blurring. I aimed to keep my aperture at no larger than f5, f5.6. The final b&w format was chosen in order to create more cohesive set, allowing the photographs to flow better.

Halloween

I am not a fan of Halloween, but this scary witch I met today at a friends house had to be acknowledged with a couple of photos! [*cute]