The Final Module: Joiners

This for me, was an 'old friend' revisited. I had chosen the theme 'Connected images' as my exam piece, for my AS level in early 2010, and I had become fascinated, and highly appreciative of the Joiner works of David Hockney, and several other artists who had chosen to work in this form. I particularly liked Hockney's 'Pearblossom Highway'

The brief advised us to look at other examples of Hockneys work, specifically, The Desk -

And 'Work Trolley', which I was unable to find an image of, despite several searches.  However,  'The Desk' like  'Pearblossom Highway' , other Hockneys and also the work of Noel Myles, which I also re-visited, re-awakened my fascination with this style of work.

I love the distortion of perspective - with Pearblossom Highway, you initially look at what appears to be a representational piece, but then you look again and the distortions starts to jump out at you,  and you find yourself looking again and again, noticing each time the slight skew, and also, with this piece, how its captured the passage of time and the movement in the landscape.  'The Desk' demonstrates the distortion of putting a 3 dimensional view/object into a  2 dimensional  image, even more.

Having experimented extensively with joiners before, I had tried printing out the individual pictures and sticking them down, overlapping them, to create a final piece. However I felt that the uneven surface of the final piece detracted from the the distortion in perspective that I especially wanted to show, and after a lot of 'trying out' of different methods, I eventually started to use a programme called picasa, which allowed me to arrange the photographs as I would if I was using individual pieces physically placed together , but produced a 'flattened image' which allowed the distortion and movement that I wanted to show.

I looked again at several of the pieces I had created for my AS level, as 'practice' pieces -

And at the 3 pieces which led to the final image
 

                                                                    

   These were going to be my final pieces, until several fellow students and friends said that the 'Kitchen Window' left them wondering what was beyond the window - and that they had found themselves craning their necks and looking at the picture from different angles as the distortion led them to feeling that they could 'see through' the window.





So, I decided to try and create a 'through the window' view . . .

 I was really happy with this image, as the photographs were taken over 3 days, and I felt the differences in the sky showed this. The appearing of my dog in two different places captured a sense of the movement that I loved in Pearblossom Highway, and the lines of the flagstones gave the sense of distortion that I particularly like in this sort of image.  I also really liked the reflections in the garage windows.

So - to tackle this subject again !

In looking at the desk, I thought I would try and focus initially on an object, and chose something simple for a practise run

Although I loved the distortion of space and lines, I didn't feel that this captured the sense of movement and change and time passage that I really find fascinating about this style.

I looked again at the work of Simran Gleason, who had produced 'joiners' of tree's that I also liked very much

 

 I liked the sense of movement in these pictures, and had decided to try a 'joiner' of a tree - then we had 3 or 4 days of high winds, and on the second day, looking out, I watched the 15 foot high cordeline in the garden being battered and - it turned out later - being destroyed by the weather. Well - here was a subject that would hopefully capture the sense of movement, and time passing that I so liked - and that would also capture an 'event', so grabbing my camera, out I went.  The resultant image comprised of pictures taken over 3 days, and moving left to right across the image shows the tree going from fully 'leaved' to battered and bald as the wind damaged it.

 

I had virtually decided to make this my final image, but a couple of weeks afterwards, I made a visit to one of my favourite 'photo' spots, the Ffrwd. I have a habit of sitting by the pond there and taking photograph after photograph of the view before me - I absolutely love the reflective qualities of the pond, and the way the sky and surrounding tree's are shown in it. And that brought me back to how I had liked the effect of the reflections in the window in my AS piece - so I started to take photographs for a joiner of the Ffrwd.  I made two visits in total, on one day the sky was the most amazing blue, and on the second, a rain fall was rolling in, and the sky was stormy looking and grey. To take it one step further, I took photographs using two different lens, 17 - 55ml, and 70-300ml zoom - I wanted to see if I could combine the two to make an image that was still representational, but in which the distortion was further emphasised and enhanced.

I am really happy with the final image

Using the two different lenses really increased the sense of distortion - though it also made it more difficult to put the piece together - and by changing the size of the photographs I used, it meant I could put more detail into parts of the picture, particularly in the pond reflections.  Although this doesn't give the sense of 'flattening out' a 3 dimensional image that 'The Desk encapsulates, I like the way the combination of photographs and different focal lengths,  aids the creation of 'depth' in the image.

Next: The Final module: Typologies.