Alice Evans at digital surface

CASE STUDY

Context

My practice centres upon staged scenarios. I think of ‘making’ rather than ‘taking’ photographs. In each photograph the methods of construction are fore grounded. The apparatus of the photography process are rendered obvious in an attempt to make the viewer aware of their own position in the viewing process.
My working process involves creating a simple set which I import from outside into the photographic studio. I ask my models to emphasise their gestures and I create photographs in which it is very obvious that the models are aware of and posing for the camera. Having created a number of images I then go through a post-production process where I use Photoshop to layer additional backgrounds onto the image and add other details to the fore ground.

I regard digital technology as vitally important to my working process. I am interested in referring and reacting to the history of analogue photography and painting but I am also acutely aware of digital technologies when creating my images. I am interested in the slight projective effect that seems to occur when combining images whose indexical origin is in several different places. I also like to highlight the digital seams in my images so that the joins between different layers are rendered obvious rather than hidden.

Surface is very significant to my work. In some photographs the division between self and other becomes apparent at the point of representation and finds confirmation through the presence of the screen or picture plane. I think of this division as socially constructed and by emphasising the physical construction of my images and the surface of them I am also thinking about the social construction of the gaze and searching for a way to undermine it. In some senses my attempts to highlight the constructed nature of photographs by emphasising the photographic equipment and studio within the frame is also an attempt to emphasise the surface of the photograph perhaps a little like introducing brushstrokes to a painting. I also experiment with different ways of digitally printing the image so that physical surface of the image is highlighted either by backlighting it or printing on different types of paper although this research is still ongoing.

Specific issues to the new piece of work

The size of the image is fixed late in the development of the piece. I like to print my images slightly larger than the original digital file so that the pixels are visible. I initially print the image at a large on semi matt poster paper to get a clear idea of the image. I then reprint on backlit paper when I have decided the size.
The surface is considered at the outset. The surface of the image has a factor in helping to create a distancing effect in combination with the inclusion of the photographic paraphernalia within the frame. I try to make the surface visible. In some senses the photograph is locked into a realist construct in the way in which the camera is a mechanical device designed to reproduce faithfully what ever is put in front of it. However, by emphasising the surface either by printing images with visible pixilation or backlighting my images, I seek to make the viewer aware of the viewing process and question the modernist assumption that photographs are capable of representing an objective truth. I am also interested in the seductive nature of the advertising image and I feel that creating a visible surface to my photographs in combination with the adoption of the clichéd poses of my models is an attempt to destabilize the seductive elements of my own images.

In terms of the relationship of digital technology to other processes I regard the digital as fundamentally important. In his essay Rhetoric of the Image Roland Barthes applies structuralist analysis to a Panzani pasta advertisement. In this essay he claims that in advertising “we never encounter a literal image in a pure state” that is without connotation. However, he does suggest that the photograph is “a message without a code” implying that there are situations where a photograph is read as if it is without connotation and that its function in advertising is through a naturalizing dynamic with the connotative elements in the rest of the advert. To create a psychological truth to the denotative symbolic elements or what Barthes refers to as a sense of “having been there” he claims, “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message”. With the advent of widespread digital editing techniques viewers of advertisements no longer expect there to be any connection between what they see in an a photograph within an advertisement and a sense of having “been there”. Barthes discusses the way in which photographs are not employed in psychological testing since he believes that “the temporal equilibrium (having been there) diminishes the projective power of the image . . .(since) the this was so easily defeats the it’s me”.

I would argue that this dynamic has been revolutionized with the advent of digital imaging techniques since there is a sense that with the blending of the real source of an image and the digitally created that there is no longer a having been there but a sense of this has never been. I question whether this in fact now allows a psychological projection to now take place. Evidence for this can perhaps be seen in the new computer graphic techniques that no longer rely on a source image and can be entirely fabricated from what has never been. To me this is an advantage not a disadvantage to the advertising world since where Barthes “literal’ image “naturalises” the food in the Panzani pasta advert the new digital image can now entirely create a fantasy without having to locate advertising or the sale of products to anything associated with realism in photography allowing the desire for and possession of the commodity to become an entirely projective phenomenon. If the product is advertised through something which depicts something that has never been and so allows a psychological projection in the way that Barthes argues that non-photographic psychological tests do then the ‘it’s me’ element of the psychological test becomes the very power of the advertising image since if we entirely link fantastical powers to the advertised product without any naturalising then we detach the link in the viewers mind between a psychological fantasy and the actual qualities that the product may possess. To me the ‘realist’ photograph of the vegetables in the Panzani pasta advert was the one thing that held the advertising back from efficacy rather than having success by the way in which Barthes claims it “innocents the semantic artifice of connotation”.

In my own images I am interested in the blending of source images but I like to do this in a way that makes the seams visible. Working digitally rather than using analogue montage techniques allows greater sophistication in some respects and yet allows anomalies to occur where I can make elements of my photo editing technique deliberately imperfect and use technology designed for the precise illusion create work that has an element of human error.