Ideas and Exploration

Below are a few ideas and inspirations that can hopefully guide me to a clear starting point for A2. It was clear that I needed to look at all different works and mediums that I was passionate about.

A few days ago I was looking at an artist called Kristie Holiday who has just come out of Boston Universities undergraduate programme for fine art. On her blog she had a few artists who had inspired her and she was interested in. One of the works was by Egon Schiele so I looked into him and his works and was quite interested in the simplicity and awkwardness of his paintings. Here are a few examples:

I dont know what I like most about his work but I think its the way
he used a small amount of colour but still captured the emotion and expressions incredibly well.


I have also looked at some of the photographers I rese
arched last year and remember looking at two photographers in particular that really captured my imagination. One being Robert Capa (Endre Erno Friedman) and the other Henri Cartier Bresson. I admire these two photographers and their works because they both captured the decisive moment and made photography look easy. Here are some of Bresson's most interesting prints in my opinion:

These are two of my favourite photographs by Capa:



In the past year I have got more and more into 'Radiohead' and their work as a lot of their songs definitely have a case to be called works of art. Many of their songs contain comments on society, culture and human kind. As I have a strong interest in film this unofficial music video for the song 'Fitter happier' by 'Radiohead' (with animation by an artist producing and uploading videos under the name of 'pabloiranzo' on YouTube) really captured my imagination:





The lyrics almost have a poetic quality to them:


Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals
(never washing spiders down the plughole),
keep in contact with old friends(enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
charity standing orders,
on Sundays ring road supermarket(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash(also on Sundays),
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism),
will not cry in public,
less chance of illness,tires that grip in the wet
(shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory,
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick,
that's driven into frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
like a pig in a cage on antibiotics.


I've also always been interested in Robert Haswell my half brother and sister's grandad who was Royal Photographer of the year twice befor
e the age of 26 and was also a very successful photo journalist for the daily express. He was a great character and was at the heart of a rather comical scandal when he was sacked by the daily express after photographing Princess Marga
ret waterskiing in the nude. Unfortunately he died of cancer in 2002 after battling with the disease for a number of years and so never set up a website. This has meant only a small number of his photos have been published on the internet and the majority of his negatives are still packed away in the attic of his widow's house. Here are just a couple of his images that I could find:


Subject: Anita Erkburg (Actress)

Subject: Sean Connery (Actor)

Subject: Yuri Gagarin (First man in space)

I would be very much interested in looking more into Robert Haswell or as i've always known him 'Grandad with Muscles' (Muscles being the name of one of his dogs who I remember destroying my brothers rubber band propelled plane. I would obviously like to explore photojournalism as a whole however its hard to be in the right place at the right time especially with such a limited amount of time on my hands so I will probably increase the number of weekends I go up to London armed with a camera standing outside Claridges or Harrods playing the waiting game in the hope of getting lucky.