Perfume adverts are well known for using famous actresses and beautiful models. Many adverts on the tv and print have connotations of sex and use generic representations of woman and men. The adverts use these to try and persuade the customer that when they buy their perfume they will conform to the stereotypes of 'beautiful woman' or 'masculinity'. Its this sort of media which invited children and teenagers to judge at an early age whether or not someone is 'normal looking'. Bellow are a few images I have found and added text to change the meaning.

Appropriation and Kruger

Appropriation means to place an object or image in a context with which it is not conventionally associated with, forcing the audience to create its own interpretation. The text appropriates (takes over) the image. Barbra Kruger uses appropriation by embracing both image and language commonly used in advertising to convey a different message. For example, in 'Your comfort is my silence', 1981, Kruger combined a black and white image of a man pushing his finger up to his lips insinuating silence with 'your comfort is my silence' text. The first two words cover the mans eyes in order to remove identity and portray the idea of 'all men are the same'. By arranging the text in an advert-like collage format to convey a message of gender stereo types, Kruger's image becomes a work of appropriation. However at the same time she is keeping her statements somewhat ambiguous, forcing the viewer to construct meaning and actively participate themselves in the appropriation process of the work. Appropriation is also used in the way Kruger's work was distributed: in the form of umbrellas, tote bags, postcards, mugs, T-shirts, posters, and so on, purposely confusing the boundaries between art and advertising. Most of the images Kruger uses for these works are found photography taken from American print media, she was using images to mock its their own sources.
                                                 
                                           

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer is a conceptual artist who lives and works in New York. I first came across her work after reading she had studied with Barbra Kruger and immediately became interested. Holzer is mostly known for her large public displays on billboards, buildings and even landscapes. She uses projection of words to present her views on feminism and society. As well as this she uses a large array of media to present her ideas and statements such as signs, benches, stickers, t-shirts, paintings, sound, light, video ect. Her large scale projections with statements such as ‘There is a fine line between information and propaganda' are intended to provoke public debate. She is also trying to break the boundaries of niche audiences within art, proving that her work can be seen by anyone, anywhere. She also integrates appropriation within her work using LED signs. The signs look like a form of advertising you would see in large cities, which is why she placed them in areas such as times square. However once read the audience can tell it is not an advertisement and questions the intention of the sign. It also points out how easy we can consume information through different media, we walk past advertisements, billboards and automatically read and consume the information and store it. It questions whether consumers today have any real control over the information that is provided to them. I find her work really inspiring as she uses words and presentation to create her art. I have so far added words on photoshop to create my images. I would like to explore and experiment using other means such a projection and possibly in the dark room.

Year 2

Last year for my independent project I looked at how words can affect images and how words used in images can create a whole new piece of art. I added words to old, boring found images to make them more interesting and meaningful. This year I think I will continue to use found photography and possibly explore ways in which I could change the artists intention. I will start by returning to look at Barbra Kruger's work and investigating her use of appropriation to portray her views. I then hope to gather a collection of used images myself to work with as I really like the idea of recycling images as there are too many in the world. Last year I used old family-taken photographs. This year I intend to dig deeper and find old photographers images and hidden treasures.

Evaluation

This is the project I found the most challenging. I chose to do word and image because I was really interested how language can change the meaning of photography. I started off with an ideas board on different ways images and text are used together. This was helpful at the beginning but did not feed me as many ideas as I hoped. I went straight into researching John Baldessari the conceptual artist. I really liked his work, how he likes to challenge the typical generic conventions of a photograph. I did try attempting some “wrong” images but to me they all came up too cliché and I didn’t think they were good enough to keep or post on my blog. I then looked at Barbra Kruger’s work, still with no image ideas for myself. I wrote about how she is mimicking adverts and writes a lot about society and feminism. But the thing I liked the most was how the meaning of the images were changed when the text was added, without the text it would be a normal, non-critical photograph. At this point in the project I was really stuck for ideas, but got really interested in conceptual art. I started cutting and pasting with magazines and newspapers, but because I don’t have any strong political views I was stuck as to what message I wanted to put across. I settled on just the one about beauty and power, trying to reflect how a lot of the time things come easier to those who are stereotypically better looking than others. After a tutorial I was instructed to look at found photography as I was completely stuck for ideas to photograph myself. So with conceptual art in mind I started playing around with words in front of an image, bringing out a fun and cheeky to my practice almost comical. Then I started looking deeply into Joachim Schmid work and liked how he uses so many different techniques and practices to present found photographs. Especially his QR code it really intrigued me to know why and how. My last selection of images consists of words overlaid onto photographs describing what is there in relation to the lay out of the image. I think my project has been very research and contextual based, it was mostly about me widening my knowledge of art history and conceptual art practitioners. There are a few starting points I wish to continue on next year, but so far this project has not come to an end. I think the main lows point in my project is my lack of outcomes. Looking back I think this is because I was over thinking and, from my point of view, not producing anything worth presenting. For the majority of the project I had a creative block, and only until the last couple of weeks did I have ideas I could expand on, I need to remember in the future go out and try to get inspired, instead of sitting in doors worrying about it and wasting time producing rubbish. If I was to continue this project next year I would look more into words, images in relation to new technology (such as QR codes) and also research deeper into conceptual art and photographers.

A Picture Paints 1000 words...

Developing my idea from taking out elements of an image and replacing it with words, I decide to take 2 photographs and replace the whole thing with words. The way I did this was just listing words in the position they are in the image.I then overlaid the text and image on photoshop but didn't really like the outcome.

Joseph Kosuth

Kosuth is an American conceptual artist who lives and works in New York. His work consists of investigating the nature of art, focusing on what makes art, art. His most famous conceptual piece of art is 'One of three chairs'. Where he has a physical chair, next to an image of the chair, next to a dictionary description of the word 'chair'. He is looking into different 'forms' of art and the differences in physical , representational image & text. Showing how the physical object is the thing, and it is accompanied only by representation (similar to this is not a pipe). Even the title reflects the view, as there is only one physical chair, yet there are three chairs. This work pushes the boundaries of conceptual art and asks the questions of "what really is art?" "what is representation?" "how is a chair important?" In 1966 he started a project named Art as Idea as Idea. Where he he took clippings from dictionaries for the words: art, chair, meaning and definition. He then photographically enlarged them to a certain size to be exhibited. He states that the 'art' is the description its self.

Rene Magritte

This image is a painting by German surrealist artist Rene Magritte. It’s a painting of a pipe, with the caption “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe”, French for “this is not a pipe”. She is trying to be clever and use text to state the obvious, somewhat being flippant and cheeky. The pipe is not a pipe, but a painting of a pipe, there is not a physical pipe in front of you, therefore it is not a pipe. This is just a playful way to include text in an image, were as lots of images anchored by text is reflecting political and social views.

My response to 'This is not a pipe'. Its a photograph of a landscape, an image I have taken myself but now anchored with the text "This is not a landscape, it is only dots". The dots are referring to pixels. The image is not a landscape, and while on the screen it is not even a physical photograph, but thousands of miniature dots making up an on-screen image. I liked this original idea but thought the image came across a little cliche, so decided not to peruse it.

Joachim Schmid

There are millions of photographs being produced around the world every day; most of them have no second thought towards them, useless snapshots that’s added to the uncountable number of images in the world’s print/online libraries. Each one is contributing to using paper, chemicals, storage and ultimately visual pollution. This is the view of photographer, Joachim Schmid. Joachim Schmid is a German based photographer who has been working with used photography since the early 1980s. At first he would purchase large amounts of used photographs and public images in flee markets that became his body of work. It was his awareness of consumerism and recycling that drove him to start collecting used art as well as his passion for photographic history. In 1990 he started a group called Reprocessing of Used Photographs, where he would ask people to send in old photographs instead of throwing them out, where they could be analyzed and deemed useful or worthless, in which case they would be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. He uses the photographs in a large variety of ways from merging two or more different images together to tearing up and repositioning segments of photographs as well as simply just arranging a group of images and presenting them in different ways.

Heres an image i found that had already been cut out. I found it interesting because its a family photograph that was found in my house, yet no one can recall who was sitting there and why they where taken out. This is what I like about found photography, each image has an unknown history and all the audience can do is speculate. I inserted the question mark myself keeping it within the text & image project.

NINE ERRORS A recent project named Nine Errors takes a step into the modern world of technology and smart phones. When I came across this I found it without a doubt the most interesting/diverse form or photography I have ever seen. It starts with a QR code, a barcode that can only be scanned and recognized by smart phones. Schmid created these codes and publically posted them around the world in cities such as Berlin, Paris, Rome, New York, London, Amsterdam ect. Once the public scan the code on their phone they would be taken to his online exhibition. Except unknowing to his audience his work was a selection of images of words and phrases. When a QR was scanned it would take you to one of nine ‘errors’. For example: “404 error: file not found” was what came up on my phone when I scanned one of his codes. Confusing the audience to think that the link was broken, when really they were looking at his work. Now with this project can arise debate on whether its classed as 'art' or even photography. But if you break it down, in actual fact you can to take a picture of the QR in order to open it, and the error codes are actually images of words. Making it a form of photography.