In-class Task for Research Journal
- Research and context
My final project is a photographic collection of portraits of human figures. In terms of genres, it is an indoor photographic work that address abstract ideology such as people’s hiding identity and emotions. It is also a work that between boundary of realistic human photography and future artwork because the subjects are real human beings, while the themes and the overall styles are futuristic.
- Locate artists or artworks
Cao Fei
Cao Fei is a contemporary Chinese artist who was born in 1978. She is known for video, film and photography artworks that explore the subtle and complication human emotions within people’s hearts as well as the borders between dream and reality. For example, many of her artworks focus on the realistic life of Chinese people in the contemporary society (Heartney, 2013). Though her artworks are based on realism, such as using techniques such as adding bright color palettes to the original photographic works, audiences can feel a sense of futurism and absurdity from her works. Inspired by Cao’s artworks, I developed my own project to explore young people’s inner complicated and subtle emotions.
Cao Fei, Untiled, 2007
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí is a Spanish Surrealist artist born in 1904 and died in 1989, and his paintings are known for depicting and revealing the sub-consciousness of human beings. For example, in his famous The Persistence of Memory, the melting clock is a symbol of people’s feelings of the passage of time (Meisler, 2005). Inspired by Dalí’s work, I would also apply the surrealism style to my work. For example, I believe the mosaics I used to cover the girl’s face is a symbol of people’s confusion about their identity.
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Ernst Haas
Ernst Haas is an Austrian-American artist who was born in 1921 and died in 1986. He is known for his unique and excellent skills in color photography, which can effectively highlight the brightness of color and the color contrast (Grundberg, 2008). Thus, inspired by Ernst Haas, I choose color photography as the medium of my work, and I believe that colors in the works can help to express the emotions and evoke audiences’ feelings and thoughts when watching the photography.
Ernst Haas, Red Rose, 1970
- Final project proposal idea and process
My final project is called “Hiding the Melancholy”. The subject of the work is a young girl. Though the work depicts the portrait of the girl, the face of the girl is covered by mosaics, making it impossible for people to see her face. As a result, when the girl is playing a guitar or sitting beside a rusty steel pole, audiences will focus on her face while they fail to see what the girl looks like and what her facial expression is at that moment.
The research interests as well as objective is to explore human beings’ hidden emotions. As the title of the project suggests, the theme and motif of the work is to unveil the hided melancholy in people’s heart. The subject, the girl, in the photographic works are the symbol of everyone who may hide their negative or melancholy emotions in their heart. For example, by using the techniques of mosaics to cover the figure’s face, this project expresses the theme of “hiding”. From this subject, audiences will be evoke to understand that though we would contact or communicate with many people every day, while all these people may wear masks on their face, so it is impossible for us to know their true personality or their true emotions. At the same time, when people are trying to hide their emotions or feelings, they are just like the girl in the photographs—people will never truly know who they are and what they look like. Moreover, in this project, the contrasting color palettes are applied as a way to express the theme of “melancholy”. Melancholy is a subtle and complicated emotion of human beings. Though it is hard to be expressed, and most people would hide it in their heart, melancholy will still have great impacts on people’s everyday life. For example, people may feel confused or lost their personal identity when they were in melancholy.
I start my approach by taking photograph of the subject, then I use photoshops and other software to process the works such as adding mosaics on figure’s face and to increase the color contrasts. In the process of photographing, I also play some melancholy music to evoke model’s emotions, helping them to express such feelings through their movement and gestures. In my opinion, to better depict and explain theme, this photographic project can be developed into a short film to more effectively express the complicated feeling of melancholy through the figure’s movement, sounds as well as the background music.
Reference:
Grundberg, A. (2008). “Obituary of Ernst Hass”. Ernst Haas: Color Photography. New York: New York University Press.
Heartney, E. (2013). “Spellbound: Cao Fei”. In Heartney, Eleanor. The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. New York: Prestel Verlag.
Meisler, S. (2005). “The Surreal World of Salvador Dalí”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-surreal-world-of-salvador-dali-78993324/.
