JOURNEY London Road South
28th May 2020
My idea for an ongoing series called JOURNEY is inspired by Boris Mikhailov’s series, ‘Structures of madness,’ which I have written about in the blog post Boris Mikhailov. This series is one of Mikhailov’s artist books where he has photographs and drawings presented loosely together.
My concept is to record a journey in photographs and line drawings of interesting streets. It can be a series that can be completed when ever and where ever, it can also be ongoing.
This first JOURNEY shows photographs of the high street in London Road South, Lowestoft. The photographs depict shops, roofs, notices, items for sale and interesting parts of architecture as well as things in the street such as bikes leaning up walls and lamp posts. It is along the theme of street photography but will also look at things in the shops as well but not the people and not whole image shots but close ups.
I decided to use the single line technique in drawing which is one of my favourite methods. With this technique I look at the objects, portraits or landscapes that I want to draw and not the paper or canvas. The line must also be continuous, with no breaks in it, one line from beginning to end which is constructed as I look over the outlines of that which is in front of me. I call these artworks journey drawings because it is about the hand and eye connection and the journey of the pen.
I have only completed a hand full of drawings as this exercise was to produce one image. However because I wanted to present an artist book I feel more had to be shown to get the feeling of how the work could look as a whole.
The photographs that I took can be seen on my contact sheet page, here. I tried to take about 100 photographs although I wanted to take more. Due to the fact this was a trial for an exercise I concentrated on one small section of one side of the road. There were many more interesting shops that I could have included but I thought I had more than enough for what I wanted to create.
I had adjusted the photographs which included both colour and black and white images. I included some colour as I wanted there to be a middle section in my artist books that contains colour to break the theme up a little so that it didn’t become a question of just presenting black and white photographs and line drawings.
Extending the project
How could I add to this series and extend the project outcome?
As already mentioned this can be an ongoing project taking in many street in many different places. I would probably keep to a seaside theme and record streets in well known and lesser known tourist areas.
The artist book would also include a map at the front of the book showing the situation of the street with an introduction about the street and the area that it can be found.
However, I have just shown a selection of photographs and line drawings in this blog post. I would position the photograph on the left hand side of the book in full with no borders and the line drawing which would appear on the right of the book, would be blue tacked to the place where the image was taken and then I would take a second photograph to show the drawing in situation. This would mean that there could be a textured background around the drawing and I would also keep it’s perforated torn edges to add more texture and interest.
At the end of the book I would have another map with a diagram showing where the photographs were taken.
NOTE: If I was studying on the degree, I would have constructed the artist book for this exercise. Also because it is an introductory course and I am four weeks behind due to my mothers death, the funeral and knock on effects to my mental health, I decided also to skip presenting this exercise as an artists book.
Technical problems
As always I had some technical problems. This time however it was connected with photographing the line drawings. I had used a yellowing cartridge paper for the work which when photographed proved to be quite tricky for me. I couldn’t get a flat colour as no matter where I took the photographs I had a slight gradient of light from one side where the light source, which was the window, made. Then I tried to photograph the work at night with an overhead daylight bulb light but again I just could not get a flat surface.
Then there was the different colouring of the end images. Although I used a tripod and the same settings and simply replaced one drawing with another. The end results do show a slight change of overall tone when you compare the images with one another. It probably would have been better if I had used white paper to draw on, but I am not sure how this would really help?
I am getting a little annoyed with my lack of technical ability, yes I am learning and that is the overall reason I started this course to learn some technical photography but I just seem to hit obstacles each time. Even my photographic shots are still showing slight problems with exposure. It would be so nice to complete one exercise without the groan at the end when I realise I have yet again not performed at a much better standard.
It makes me wonder if I actually should attempt the degree course or not.
Just remembered I didn’t change the WB which has not helped the photographing of the paper.
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