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Io Island * 1977 * Kim Ki-young

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Io Island * 1977 * Kim Ki-young

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LETTER OF INTENT FINAL VERSION

My FMP was first centred around the exploration of the the LGBTQ+ community, and the notion of queer identity, persecution and liberation. This was greatly inspired by the research I conducted about queer expression and the inspiration I took from a number of queer artists and films. I was originally planning to photograph a number of queer people, to show a variety of experiences and perspectives. I recently decided that I want to create a more personal project which will involve photographing my girlfriend, Amy. By photographing her I will maintain the LGBTQ+ theme but it will become much more personal, and will hopefully provide a glimpse into a young lesbian relationship involving Amy and I. In doing this, I hope to be able to subvert the male gaze and challenge the typical representation of lesbianism, which is often seen as something for male consumption. I am keen to be able to show a pure side of love and femininity, and have decided that I can explore an LGBTQ+ theme without it having to be about oppression and aggression, rather it can be something soft and beautiful, which shows a positive side to the queer experience. This project is therefore very sensitive and will carefully show the compassion, vulnerability and intimacy that exists in my relationship with Amy.

I am going to use photography as my primary method because I think this is the best way to capture intimate moments, and will experiment with colour film but mostly plan on using black and white, if it has the effect I intend which is nostalgia, softness and strong atmosphere. I will be using film over digital for the same reason.

This project will also be greatly inspired by the artists I have already begun to research, such as Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Frank and Sage Sohier. I have become inspired by each of these artists for different reasons, some because of their message and intent, and others because of the composition in their photography.

I will evaluate my work in a number of ways. Firstly I will receive feedback from both my peers and my tutors, and will use their comments and any critique they might have to improve my work, and will later consider how my project went when it is completed. Then, I will self-evaluate my looking back at my original as outlined in this letter of intent, and will comment upon how I was able to achieve these aims, as well as considering anything that I failed to do or any challenges and/or restraints I encountered. I will record the process of my final project through a Tumblr, which I hope will explore a number of critical decisions that I will make throughout the project. I will use Wix as a portfolio for my work.

In conclusion, I hope that with this project the audience will be able to understand my perspective, and will see Amy through my eyes, and hopefully will get some sense of the love I have for her. I also hope to communicate the way in which these portraits will be representative of our relationship, in that both take time and investment, and by being with her constantly I am able to constantly work on this project because every second spent with her will add something to the project. In this sense, the project is a sort of method acting style of photography because I am constantly living through the work I am producing, and experiencing the intimacy and compassion that will hopefully be portrayed.

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On why I’m using photography as my primary medium

During the year I wanted to trial a variety of artistic mediums in order to see which I excelled at most. I experimented with painting, drawing, filmmaking, sculpture and other 3D art and finally photography. Photography was what I excelled at, and it came most naturally to me. I found that in photography I felt most creative and I had the most inspiration. Also, with photography I felt that I was able to recognise the strengths of my works, whereas with other mediums I found it hard to recognise my own ability and strengths, often doubting myself. The comfort I found in photography made me realise that I should utilise this for my final project, and when I finally decided on the aims of my project I decided I would start using photography to achieve these aims. 

I liked that using photography in this final project allowed me to explore how to use a camera creatively and differently, with consideration of how using different techniques might change the outcome of a photograph. In using photography I also had the opportunity to explore in depth a number of photographers and truly appreciate and analyse their work.

I think that photographs are the most effective medium in immortalising a single moment of intimacy, and being able to portray intimacy in the best way possible was essential for the overall aims of my project. Photography was also chosen as my primary medium for the final project because it allowed me to very clearly show my personal perspective, which allows the audience to see Amy in the way I see her when they view my portraits of her. This became particularly apparent to me when I was receiving feedback from my tutors, and they suggested that there was a deep intimacy and love in the photographs that could be felt even to an outsider, simply by viewing the photos.

One of my tutors suggested that this kind of photography is somewhat like method acting, in that I was immersing myself in the project by living with Amy and having a real, intimate relationship with her. This project is only a glimpse into our life together, but still reveals a lot about us, and our relationship.

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On Colour Series 2

At a much later stage, I wanted to experiment with colour again because of the vibrancy in the setting. I am pleased with the way I was able to portray these bold colours and show the contrast between the blue sky and Amy’s yellow print dress, and her light hair. However, I still decided not to include these photos in my final piece because I thought the random inclusion of some colour photos would disrupt the atmosphere established by an entire collection of black and white photographs.

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On Colour Series 1

This was the very first series I took. I was using colour film at this point, and in this very first series I was still trying to understand how best to take photos of Amy, and as a result these photographs definitely didn’t have the same emotional impact as the later portraits I took which feel much more natural and provide a greater insight into a very intimate moment. Some of these photos were more successful than others, and at this point I  was still trying to figure what kind of lighting was best to use. In some of these photographs I used coloured lighting, which had an interesting impact, but I came to prefer the simplicity of black and white over colour.

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On B&W Series 5

In this series I experimented by using HP5 film rather than the usual XP2, and this paid off because the HP5 film created some beautiful grain which I was very pleased with. The grain proved to be somewhat problematic when it came to making larger prints, because it made the prints come out very pixelated, but this was easily fixed by changing the resolution of the images. Most of this series was taken outdoors, and this time it was much easier to work with natural lighting, and the HP5 film created some very interesting contrast; even in bright and sunny settings. This series also had a strong sense of nostalgia which I was pleased with, and I was also very pleased with the composition and the way in which Amy became the natural focus of each of these photographs, undistracted by any complex backgrounds. By comparison, series 3 had overly complex backgrounds which drew focus away from Amy, and so with this series I was glad to have fixed this, while still being able to use outdoor settings.

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On B&W Series 2

In this series I paid much greater attention to the composition of my photographs, which had a positive impact because I was very pleased with how this series how came out. I used lighting more carefully and to have a stronger impact in my photos, by creating dramatic highlights and shadows. This series was all shot in Manchester, Amy’s hometown. This created even more intimacy because I was photographing Amy in places even more personal to her, such as her childhood bedroom. A number of shots were also taken outside her home, in public places such as shop changing rooms which provided an interesting light source, as well as dark bars which tested my ability to work with darkness, and brightly-lit bowling alleys. All of these places created an interesting context to photograph Amy in, and the introduction of public spaces brought a new dimension to the way I captured intimacy.

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On B&W Series 1

This was my first roll of black and white film and at this stage I was still getting used to working with black and white. In this series I also used a kaleidoscopic lens on my camera, just to experiment, which produced some interesting images. I was very deliberately working with contrast in these images, and I was pleased with how it turned out. I found that some of these pictures were reminiscent of film stills, and I really liked this effect. I was still not entirely satisfied with the composition of these photographs, so after these images I intended to spend more time carefully considering composition. For this series I used Amy’s own personal spaces, specifically her bedroom and her bathroom. By this point Amy began getting more comfortable with the camera although some of the images still seem somewhat stiff and not yet completely natural.

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On challenges and constraints

When I began this project I had a very different idea of what I wanted to achieve, which was centred around the idea of queer oppression, persecution and liberation. I started working around this idea, but felt that it wasn’t personally as inspiring to me as I had thought it would be. I began taking photographs of Amy, which I initially thought would form part of my original final project as I was planning to photograph a number of queer people, but I found that when i started taking photographs of Amy it felt so natural and I loved the way in which I was able to capture our intimacy. This led me to re-evaluate my original plan, and I found that I was much more inspired by and connected to these portraits of Amy. This also made me realise that sometimes less is more, and whereas I was trying to create a complicated, politically charged final project, it was much more effective to me to create an intimate and personal project that did not necessarily have a political meaning.

When I officially decided that the aim of my project had changed, I needed to entirely reconsider the plan I had made because I had originally intended to create an installation as my final piece, but when I changed my project I realised that this would no longer work, so I had to decide what I could do alternatively. After some deliberation and advice from my peers and tutors, I decided that I would instead create some large prints to accompany a photo book, which are discussed in greater detail in a separate post.

There were also some technical problems I encountered while creating my final project. One of the first rolls I used went to waste because I didn’t unload it properly, thus exposing the photographs on it. This inspired me to learn how to properly unload a used film, because I didn’t want to lose any more photos, and after I fixed this problem, I had no more issues. Also, when I started taking photos of Amy I was at first using colour film, but I found that this wasn’t creating the sort of atmosphere I wanted, so I trialled using black and white film and found this was much more effective, and instantly gave me exactly what I was looking for in these portraits.

When it came to organising my final piece, I had a very minor issue regarding the quality of some of my photographs when I got them enlarged and printed, because the resolution made them slightly too pixelated and I wasn’t satisfied with their quality, especially in the more grainy photographs I took. To fix this I simply got the negatives put into a higher resolution, and when I got them reprinted on a larger scale, the quality had vastly improved and they were no longer too pixelated.

Throughout the project I feel that my ability was developing, and my method involved taking as many photos as I could until I found the ones I was happy with. This allowed me to accumulate a large body of work consisting of 6 different series of photographs, which I then picked the best of.

Regarding constraints of the project, my access to lighting somewhat limited the photographs I was able to produce. I had originally wanted to take photos of Amy outside, at night, but my camera didn’t have a working flash so instead I had to rely on using artificial lighting indoors to create dramatic shadows and highlights. This actually benefitted my project because it forced me to think creatively and resulted in me creating some powerful images with strong contrast, one of which ended up being the central part of my final piece.

There were also some financial limitations because of the cost of film and getting it developed as prints and digitally, to use on a CD. If I had had unlimited funds I would have probably been able to take many more photos, but this simply wasn’t financially possible. The college assisted me with the funds for the photo book and the large prints, and without this I might not have been able to produce this kind of final piece.

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On sexualisation & the male gaze

The function of my photographs is to reclaim the male gaze. Practically all filmmakers, directors of photography and famous photographers are men, meaning we constantly see the perspective of men. We are mostly used to seeing women being portrayed by men, lesbian women being portrayed by cisgender, heterosexual men, and these portrayals are likely not to be accurate (ex: lesbian pornography).

With this series of photographs, I aimed to challenge this male-dominated perspective and use my own perspective to photograph women, from a woman’s perspective. My aim was also to give a realistic portrayal, and create only realistic photographs; nothing is staged, my photographs are taken in the moment, using her room, her own space, her clothes, thus only using natural settings. I want the audience to be able to see what my photography is trying to achieve, and am interested to see if the audience can understand and see the change in the point of view. The perspective of the photographs here are mine, and I decided to only photograph Amy, my girlfriend, as it will be the truest, purest and closest work I would produce, given the status of our relationship. Furthermore, it raises an interesting question as on my part, if I take nude photography of her, do I sexualise her given us being intimate? Will the audience see the intimacy if they’re not aware of the status of our relationship ? It is also crucial to consider my own sexuality and identification as a lesbian in the context of these photos because it gives another dimension to the reclamation of the male gaze and raises the question of whether attraction to women impacts the way in which a person would photograph women. I would argue that queer women photographing other women is nothing close to the male gaze, because women naturally have more sensitivity in photographing women and will be able to relate to their subjects and understand how they feel more than a male photographer would be able to.

In order to try to begin answering the aforementioned questions, there must be some definition of sexualisation. Sexualisation is when something that’s not intended to be sexual becomes sexual because of the way it is interpreted and viewed by an audience. In the context of my work, this refers to nude photographs that are not intended to be inherently sexual but maybe sexualised by certain audiences.

In my series of work it is also interesting to consider the question of how does sexualisation change in the context of the audience? It will be interesting to see the audience’s reaction and perception, how will her parents see it compared to teachers, friends, and strangers. Each will have a different opinion and point of view. For example, her parents may feel uncomfortable by the nudity of their daughter, and her friends too perhaps. It is taught in those relationships that it is indecent to see each other naked, but since the function of those photographs are not to be sexually appealing or pleasing, will that change the way in which they view the photographs? But if nudity is for art’s sake, can you sexualise it at all ? Can art work be sexualised? One hand I could argue that yes, it can be because people will do it automatically and because it is taught in our society that nudity is inherently sexual, whereas I can also argue that it does not necessarily have to be sexualised, partly because art’s final function is not to illicit a sexual response.

To further my understanding of this debate, I did some reading around the perception of lesbianism and the reclamation of female and specifically lesbian female perspectives in art. I found an essay entitled « The eroticization of lesbianism by heterosexual men » by Kristin Puhl (published in 2010). Puhl makes some interesting comment on the place of lesbianism in public perception, arguing that « The perception of lesbianism as erotic extends throughout mainstream society targeted to heterosexual men, including the stereotyping of lesbians, the « butch » lesbian and the feminine, sexualised lesbian. »

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On using blogs

I chose to use online formats to present my work and my self-analysis because I found it a more effective, somewhat interactive way in which I could display my work. I originally started by using a sketchbook to document initial ideas, as well as using it to display some of the artist inspiration that I got, but I quickly decided that I would feel more comfortable using an online platform to share my work.

I first created a Tumblr, which I planned to use for both my photographs and any written analytical work, however I soon found that I wanted to keep these elements separate, and so decided to create a website using Wix which would serve as an online portfolio displaying all my photography for this project. Then, I would use Tumblr to present my written, critical ideas about my project, and use it to document the progression and evolution of my project.

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Final Piece

My final piece is made up of two main components, a photo book consisting of 100 pages, and a number of larger prints that will be mounted in an exhibition space.

Firstly, I chose to use a photo book to display the majority of my images because my photographs work mostly as a series, and needed to be seen in conjunction with the other photographs of the series to show progression and the wider context. This was partly inspired by Cindy Sherman’s book The Complete Untitled Film Stills, which had a simple yet effective presentation of her images, which was something I hoped to reproduce. The title of my book is ‘February-May 2018’ because it simply shows the progression of time and also highlights the way in which such a short period can be so significant and memorable. It shows these few intimate months as a self-contained period in which Amy and I’s relationship grew.

I wanted to put the book in chronological order to again emphasise the progression of time, and also felt it was important in understanding how my portraits of Amy might change as we grew closer to each other, which is clearly marked through the monthly titles given to each new set of photographs in the book. In the book I included almost all of the original photos I had taken, as I was eager to show the development of my photography.

In addition to my photo book, I also selected a smaller number of prints to be enlarged and displayed in the exhibition that will be held, where they will be mounted onto white walls. I chose ten A3 prints to include, as I felt these photographs could be viewed on their own and still have an impact, whereas some photographs only seen in the book would not have the same impact if they were not viewed alongside images from the same series. These ten prints were selected from the entire range of my work, and are representative of each month that was captured. I specifically went with ten prints because I wanted to select the most stand-out photographs, and found that twelve would be a perfect amount and would not be too much, which might distract away from the main substance of the work. To pick out these prints, I also used feedback from both my peers and my teachers. I wanted to gain an understanding of which photos stood out most to people who had never seen the pictures before, and then asked them to pick out the ones they felt stood out the most. I then took notes of the ones people tended to be drawn to, and used this to assist me in selecting the photos, however I also went with my own artistic instinct. Then, I chose to get one photograph printed to A2 size, which will be the central focus of the exhibition. I specifically went with this image because it encompassed the strongest parts of my work; it had a strong composition, interesting use of light and shadows to create contrast and was also highly intimate.

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Cindy Sherman inspiration

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Man Ray inspiration

I got a lot of inspiration from the work of photographer Man Ray, and especially from his anatomical photographs, most notably Anatomies (1929) and Lee Miller (Neck) (1930). I found it interesting to use lighting in a dramatic way to accentuate shadows. The neck is interesting to photograph because of its visual appeal, but also because of the way it is connotative of intimacy, which is a central theme in my work.

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On using film over digital

I chose to use a film camera instead of a digital camera for a number of reasons.

Personally, I have always felt that using film creates much more interesting images, partly because of the aesthetic of film and also because of the way in which using film forces you to carefully consider each and every image. Because each film photograph is precious and there are only a limited number of photos, you have to really take your time in crafting an image and considering its composition. This also forces you to consider whether or not a single shot is worth it or not, and this kind of thoughtfulness produces higher quality images because of the amount of thought that has gone into each photograph. There is still room for a photograph to be effortless even when it is well-composed and thought out, and this is something that I am always trying to achieve when I use film because while I want my images to be of a high quality, I also want them to seem very effortless and spontaneous, portraying a brief passing moment. At the same time, I like the way in which film can act as a metaphor, in that the exposures took months to collect which represents the time taken to establish trust and intimacy, something that was central to my portraits of Amy.

Aesthetically, there is something to be said of film photography because of the nostalgic feel it can easily create, and the timelessness of its images. Digital, on the other hand, doesn’t quite have the same visual impact and doesn’t naturally create the softer and more muted images that film photography naturally achieves. 

I would also say that using film in my photographs is favourable because of the way in which it has an element of surprise which allows you to find more meaning in your images. The way in which film photos cannot be instantly seen means that later, when they are developed, there is a reconnection with a standalone moment, and I think film is very good at being able to create these self-contained moments that hold a lot of emotion.