(Collier Schorr)
(My own work)
The first image is by Collier Schorr and the photographic collage is an installation within a frame that combines multiple subjects and photographs into one image. There are two subjects, one female and one male who are both in states of various undress which appears to focus on the themes of sexuality which often recurs in Schorr's work. There is also a contrast between nature and man made structures which could be an implicit method of contrasting females to males. Nature is often seen as feminine, mother nature, whilst man made structures, even in its naming using the generic man, contrasts to that. It appears to be a battle on the page between masculinity and femininity through colours and the skill of layering. Moreover, the masculine photos are jagged and cut into straight lines whilst the photograph of the female is curved almost conveying the shape of a feminine body. Contextually, Schorr is also a feminists who advocates for representation of minority communitites in her work which often employs androgynous and LGBTQ+ community models. In relation to the denotation there are a combination of photographs and pencil notes within the frame of this installation. The photographs are cut into various shapes and sizes which mimics an amateur scrapbooking nostalgic aesthetic and also utilises various colours; some photographs are fully in colour whilst others are black and white. There are multiple juxtapositions in this image with some being the colours, themes and technique of cutting.
The second photographic compilation is the final outcome from shoot 4 and features multiple subjects who help to address my theme of youth. There are photographs alongside object collected on, and relating, to the day of the photoshoot; some important moments include the bloodied plaster and the burnt paper. The connotations of these symbolic items is relating to the idea of youth as fun, trouble and self-destructive in accordance with Ann Gould's theory of youth representations. Furthermore, there are multiple photographs in which the subject is graffiti and this is to link to the idea of youth subcultures as destructive but my implicit ideologies was instead to show that the younger generation have a voice but nowhere to showcase their messages. More explicitly evident in this collage is my recurring use of colour where I focused on collating images of the same, or similar, hues and saturation. I did, however, also capture some images and edit them into black and white tones to bring contrast to the overall final installation. Additionally, another main feature of my work is that it uses a collage technique where photographs have been manipulated through cutting, sticking and layering to mimic the amateur scrapbooking technique and aesthetic employed by multitudes of polaroid photographers.
There is evidence of Schorr's influence on my project when looking at technique. For example, I utilised the collage layering technique seen in Collier Schorr's body of work but also employed the multiple colourisastions of images in that I used black and white alongside colour photographs. Additionally, my final outcome is not intended to be viewed as a digital image but instead as an installation due to its 3D nature and scale; this could be understood about Schorr's work too as the image was in a gallery exhibition and is a framed original image. However, there are also many differences between the two above works in that Schorr had a continued theme of gender and sexuality throughout her work whilst mine addressed identity and youth subculture. Moreover, Schorr's final image, despite using a similar technique to mine, is more simplistic in its nature which creates the more fine art photographer atmosphere whilst my work is supposed to mimic a more organised chaos of an amateur like I am.
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