Exercise 4.6: Proposal for the self-directed project

I am tasked to write a project proposal for the self-directed project that you’ll submit as Assignment Five - the limit is 500 words.

The purpose of this document is to formulate and communicate your ideas to your tutor, for 
them to approve and provide comments, suggestions and any other feedback.

The project proposal is not a binding contract. It is quite acceptable for it to evolve and 
perhaps shift direction; this is part of the creative process. However, you may find it helpful 
to think of the document as a real-life professional application for funding, or for permission 
to photograph at a restricted location.

Your proposal should include:
• The project brief: What, where, how and why are you photographing this subject? Your 
motivation is important. What is the wider context around this subject?
• Influences and research: Which photographers, writers or other creative practitioners 
have you looked at/will you look at during this project? Include a reading list if 
appropriate.
• Likely treatment: How will you photograph this subject? What special techniques or 
equipment will you use? Do you need any further training? Do you need or have you 
got a ‘plan B’ in case something doesn’t work?
• Potential outcome: Note any (realistic!) ideas you have for resolving this body of work 
(e.g. book, gallery or site-specific installation). 
• Budget/resources: What will you need to spend, or what other resources will you 
require to complete the work? How will you access these?
 • Estimated schedule: Identify the different phases of this work and set realistic deadlines 
to achieve them by. It is often helpful to do this by identifying the final deadline and 
working backwards. 

You should also explain if or how this project builds upon your previous projects and research. 

If you’ve already worked in a related area, or if you’ve already begun the preliminary work, 
then include some photographs, if they are relevant to the proposal. 

My brief is detailed below:

The Project Brief

The brief is to photograph “Man’s Influence on the Landscape” selecting areas around my local area in the Forest of Dean where they are impacted in either a positive or a negative by the actions of individuals or groups.

On an individual scale we each contribute both positively and negatively in our own small ways and influence our local landscapes - a lot of a little can soon add up.

Influence and Research

Man’s influence on the Landscape can viewed as both positive and negative and the work of practitioners such as Salgado highlight that a decision by man to take no action can have a positive effect on the Landscape. I particularly enjoy the emotion that I find in his black and white images.

Much of what we see has been so ingrained in our lives that we take it as normal yet David Maisel using a viewpoint that is beyond most people can bring home the truth of man’s impact on a wider scale. Alex MacLean also demonstrated areas of Wales impacted by Man also on an aerial scale.

Sometimes things are right in front of our eyes yet we fail to notice them and a simple different perspective can bring them to light

Likely Treatment

I would like to work in black and white, I enjoy the contrast and shades of colours between black and white plus the simpolicity of mono. I will give this some thought. I enjoyed my experimentation for Assignment 2 in trying to replicate / develop a type of emotion within an image. I will need to read up on black and white photography and technique and consider using high dynamic range treatment within my images

Potential Outcome

I want to create a set of individual images but bound by the local of my local area and I want to demonstrate both the negative and positive impact of man on my local landscape

Budget Resources

I will need access to specific areas perhaps some achieved at a small cost and some through a simple request

Estimated Schedule

Given my current position regarding work and being away from home mid week I estimate around the end of February 2017 / Mid March

Exercise 4.5: Signifier – Signified

We are tasked to find an advert from a magazine, newspaper or the internet, which has some clearly identifiable signs.

 A semiotic analysis of an image or a piece of film is the quantification of how meaning is constructed or a message is communicated. 
Before writing ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ Barthes wrote the essay ‘Myth Today’ (1972), in which he described two levels of meaning: sign and myth: 

• The first level of meaning, sign, comprises a signifier and a signified – or a denoted object (the actual thing depicted) and the connoted message (what the thing depicted communicates). 

• The second level of meaning, myth, takes into account the viewer’s existing contextual 

knowledge that informs a reading of the image. 

The image I have selected is as follows:

Signifier                                                                            Signified
The dominant colour of yellow                                           A sandy beach
A skinny, attractive and youthful female                            Sunbathing with a slim body

Warm colour of yellow                                                        Heat and thus less clothes worn

The model looking and judging you                                   A requirement so do something   
An assessment of your body                                            


The product is almost lost by the in your face statement that you are being judged and you don't match up to the model contained in the advertisement.  The product needs to be found in the advert and perhaps because of this effort itr will stay in your mind. However very clearly the message most of the population would take away is that they DONT have a beach body and need to do something about it. The product owners anticipate you will buy their product to attempt to achieve the beach ready body.

The advert was very controversial

Writer Naomi Firsht wrote:

"Fashion freebie magazine Stylist practically dedicated a whole issue to it. Its front cover was a mock-up of the Protein World ad, but instead of a super-skinny model there was a smiling model around two dress sizes bigger, a beach ball under one arm next to the proud declaration: ‘Tell me I’m not beach body ready!’ and the tagline: ‘Go on, we dare you. Why no body-bashing ad campaign will ruin our holidays.’The ad-bashing continued inside Stylist, with an editorial titled ‘Your body is not up for judgement’ and then a four-page feature analysing the advert.The feature begins by smugly announcing that Stylist has always been a ‘diet-free zone’ because it wants ‘to give women a break from the relentless pressure to fit that particular week’s body ideal’. Very noble. Except I couldn’t help noticing that within the first 15 pages of the magazine, there were no less than five adverts featuring skinny models wearing bikinis or less. In most of the perfume ads the models were completely naked apart from some strategically placed jewellery.".

                 

Exercise 4.4: ‘Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men’

We are asked to read the within the link below. This text provides a contextual insight (particularly in relation to American photography) and an interesting sense of the climate from which much critical practice has emerged. 

http://www.deborahbright.net/PDF/Bright-Marlboro.pdf

Bright herself summarized her own essay saying: "Probably my most widely known essay, “Of Mother Nature” was an attempt to answer the question: “Why are there no great women landscape photographers?” With twenty years of hindsight, I can appreciate the polemical tone of the essay as an artifact of its time in the mid-1980s (raging gender wars within the Society for Photographic Education where I was active in the Women’s Caucus, an exciting energy as artists and scholars were speaking truth to power in the academy and art world and inventing new critical tools to dismantle entrenched minority privilege.) Those heady days seem distant, now, as conservative backlash has taken its toll. However, the fact that this essay still strikes a chord with so many young people indicates to me that it’s still doing its good work"

The essay per the copy right appears to have been written around 1985 and from this her summary suggests this itself was written 2005.

Key Comments / Points I noted:

1. The term Marlboro man rang a bell with me regarding advertising (I think TV and/or posters) for the cigarette and a manly cowboy puffing on one. A quick Wiki search and I find the following from this Wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man
"The Marlboro advertising campaign, created by Leo Burnett Worldwide, is said to be one of the most brilliant advertisement campaigns of all time.^[2] It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan "Mild as May", into one that was masculine, in a matter of months. There were many Marlboro Men. The first models were a Navy Lieutenant and Andy Armstrong, the ad agency’s art supervisor.^[3][4][5] Other early models were sales promotion director of Philip Morris, Robert Larking, and others from the Leo Burnett ad agency, Lee Stanley and Owen Smith.^[6] A number of models who have portrayed the Marlboro Man have died of smoking-related diseases.^[7]


2. Bright starts off reviewing I think early pictorialism as the beginnings of landscape as an art form

3. I was particularly taken by the phrase "..whatever its aesthetic merits, every representation of landscape is also a record of human values and actions imposed on the land over time".  I wonder if the human values and actions imposed on the land are those physically or those portrayed in art and photography.

4. "The red blooded pioneer life" she refers to has been the subject of many films of the 50's and 60's and many of which I think I likely grew up watching with my parents. The strong male pioneer fighting of the Indians I think must be the Malboro men that Bright refers to. Actors portraying the masculine cowboy types were seen by the film goers as strong and red blooded and their woman often portrayed as the emotional homemakers in the big dresses. I note a few real life strong women of this era existed such as Cattle Kate and Calamity Jane.

5. Much of the scenery depicted in the stereotypical films I refer to above had been captured on canvas or as photographic prints. The real life pioneers brought in the rail-roads and to a degree facilitated travel and views of these locations and "lured tourists into making the journey to find the Real Thing."

6. Bright mentions "Returning to landscape, what can photographs of landscapes tell us about how we construct our sense of the world and its relations?" . Does this mean our views of landscape images are shaped by how the photographers interpret them since people both current and past may have no personal access or access to an unbias view of that particular landscape. There have personal views of the landscape and fitment within entirely shaped by the photograph. I expect the black and white cowboy type films did exactly the same when describing the red-blooded male and home making women of that era.

7. Following on from 6 above this most certainly would have been the view of male and female photographers in early landscape imagery with just a few Cattle Kate's / Calamity Jane's being accepted among the red blooded pioneering male landscape photographers