BA(Hons) Photography

‘Primitive’ Photography
Ref:PHO412

Patrick Conlon
What is Primitive?
prim·i·tive (prm-tv)
adj.
1. Not derived from something else; primary or basic.
2.Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval.
3. Characterized by simplicity or crudity; unsophisticated: primitive weapons.
4. Anthropology Of or relating to a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially one that is charac-
terized by a low level of economic complexity: primitive societies.
7.a. Of or created by an artist without formal training; simple or naive in style.
b. Of or relating to the work of an artist from a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially a cul-
ture that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
n.
1. Anthropology A person belonging to a nonindustrial, often tribal society, especially a society
characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
2. An unsophisticated person.
3. One that is at a low or early stage of development.
4.a. One belonging to an early stage in the development of an artistic trend, especially a painter of
the pre-Renaissance period.
b. An artist having or affecting a simple, direct, unschooled style, as of painting.
c. A self-taught artist.
d. A work of art created by a primitive artist.
7. Computer Science A basic or fundamental unit of machine instruction or translation.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. :http://www.thefreedictionary.com/primitive

After looking into the definition of ‘Primitive’ itself I have come to the conclusion that there are
two main aspects of the definition which would be relative to this unit, the first being “One belong-
ing to an early stage in the development of an artistic trend.” In my eye this would mainly consist
of looking into artists who ‘invented’ photography, the original pioneers of the medium and what
techniques they used to create the original photographs. The second aspect of the definition which
caught my eye was “An artist having or affecting a simple, direct, unschooled style,” this could
consist at looking at any time during photographic, many people have used simple techniques to
create original and creative ideas. I feel there can be many interpretations of primitive, I would like
to focus on the aspects of recreating a image look and feel of how the original pioneers of photog-
raphy gained. With there paper like and glass negatives I will look to create a final image which
reflects the work done in the past.
degare type
Orsen Welles-Le procès
Persopolsis
Terry Richardson/Vice
Alex Prager

Alex Prager is an American female artist which came to my attention after reading the magazine
Tank, her style has been influence heavily in my opinion by Cindy Sherman. The series which
was featured in this magazine is called ‘The Big Valley,’ in this series the artist has used herself
as the main focus of the work in a suburban nightmare based in LA. What really struck me about
these images is the colour, really vivid and saturated, but with skin which seems almost plasticly
maybe a comment on the fakery of LA. The series itself is very pleasing to the eye, with original
composition and lighting. What I also see when I look at her work I see similarities with what Gre-
gory Crewdson is currently producing with that post production feel to them. What I would like
to take away from this artist is her use of lighting her subjects and direction of the subjects. She
is able to create a focal point, my eye often gets drawn to one main area of the image often her-
self. For example in the image above ‘untitled’
all the other women in the image are all staring
or glancing at the artist herself. One issue I do
have with her photography is I do feel it is a bit
too heavily influenced by Sherman, which may
not be seen as a bad thing but I feel the notion of
this idea and the theme of Americana has been
over used. And because to me I feel it has been
overused I do not get as excited over the work,
and the message of the suburban nightmare has
been watered down
David Baily
Tile Experiment
I started off looking at liquid emulsion in
Michael Langford Advanced Photography, I
first considered mixing up my own emulsion
but came to the conclusion that this would
make it unnecessarily complex. So what I
decided on doing was to just use the ready
made mix from silver print, in the Michael
Langford Advanced Photography book there
is an image of a tile which has been covered
with liquid emulsion which inspired to give this
technique a try. With this technique I came
up against some issues, I started off by first
buying a matt tile which had a rough feel to it
hoping the liquid light would have something
to grip on to. To increase the chances of the
liquid light sticking to the surface of the tile
I also rough the surface up even more with
the use of wire wool, this made the tile very
rough to touch. I felt confident that this would
have the desired effect. One issue I found with
the idea of liquid emulsion is test strips can
become rather expensive unlike paper which
is easily available and relatively consist in
results, liquid emulsion has a lot more vari-
ables. The exposure time of liquid emulsion
can depend on how thick you have applied
the liquid, the surface the emulsion has been
applied to and how old the emulsion is with
the amount of times it has been heated up ef-
fecting the chemicals What I found happened
is the emulsion would dry on to the surface
and feel secure with no movement, but when
I added the tile into the developer the image
would appear but then with great annoyance
the emulsion would lift from the surface of the
tile, I tried many different techniques of adding
the developer and fixer, with the most effect
being sponging it on. Despite this I still failed
to get any decent result the only thing I got out
of it was a small test strip. cont.
 On the left is the only image I managed to get
out of the experiments, as you can see even
still you can see the image has moved due
to the liquid emulsion not fixating on to the
surface fully. This technique caused me great
frustration due to the hours of time invested
into it for no great gain.

On the right you can see a copy of the same image

but a few weeks later, as you can see it has lost more
detail and gone off to a browny, yellow colour. This
has been cause by not fixing the image fully, I feel
this happened due to frustration by not spending
the time by doing the development process fully has
caused me to ruin the only image I got out off it. Also
i was not wanting to leave the image in any liquid for
any length of time in fear of loosing the image fully.
Sarah Moon

Sarah Moon’s photography always

seems to catch my eye with her use of
Polaroids which is a simple but effect
technique. The images always seem
to have an air darkness about them,
slightly creepy images. This is some-
thing I admire and would love to reproduce in my own work for this project. I find her simple tech-
niques i.e use of Polaroid, which could be considered primitive offers an interesting look of texture
and tonal values to her images. I feel her dirty style of commercial image making has heavily
influenced the fashion photography of today, with fashion photographers rebelling against the ‘per-
fect’ image. An example of this is magazines like vice which I looked at earlier. The images I have
included here are from her recent project called circus, I picked up on these images because I feel
they are both good examples of Sarah
Moons work as a whole. Both of them
not perfect prints with hints of Julia
Margaret Cameron style about them,
portraits which show the subject in a
intimate situation, I get the feeling that
I am looking into the soul of the subject
seeing them in a venerable state.
talbot and calotype
Man-ray
Fabric Experiment
After my failed attempts at using liquid emulsion on tiles and the being inspired by the works of
Sarah Moon and Man-Ray I decided to give printing on fabric a chance. Obviously also William
Fox Talbot calotype method is a big influence, the reason I have not used the calotype method
itself is the film surface is slow with a ISO of 6 and with myself wanting to use people in my images
I feel it will restrict me on what I could do final do. The negatives I used for these images are just
shots I took over the summer as a favor for a friend, but felt the high contrast of the images would
help work and emprise the difference between the image and the fabric. Below are two digital im-
ages of two of my large practices the actual fabric measures out and 60 cm by 45 cm, the digital
images do not effectively show the scale. What I enjoy about these images is the sense of texture,
they are images that to me just call out to be touched and with this interesting plastic feel to them.
When this images are laid against a white surface you get a similar look to a normal print, where
these images come into there own is when you put a light source behind them. With this you get
to see every detail of the image, every defect in the printing technique, every finger print and every
paint stroke. After these experiments I feel this is something I would like to explore in more detail
looking to use this in my final image.
Example Of

Fabric
 While experimenting with liquid light on fabric i
made a smaller version which was 22 cm by 17
cm, with this one I decided to use it in the 10”
by 8 enlarger to use as a negative. This gave
me a negative version of the print, to turn this
into a positive I sandwiched the negative print
with another piece of photographic paper. This
in turn gave me the positive that you can see,
after experimenting with this technique I do
enjoy how the imperfectness of the ‘negative’ is
reflected on the print. However with the fabric
prints themselves I feel its about the object
itself more and that what I quite like about them
which I feel is lost when printed onto standard
paper, so because of this I have decided to
stick with just the fabric prints themselves.
David Hockney and The ‘Joiner’
Faberic joiner
ideas
images
Final Image
evukation.