ARTIST: Bettina Von Zwehl

Goodness me, I really love Bettina Von Zwehl's work. She came to talk at my university last term. Since then, she has influenced my work quite a bit (I haven't shown any of that specific work on here yet, though). The aim of her work is to photograph her subjects when they are in no way thinking about their personal appearance. Well, this is deffinately the case in 'Untitled One', 'Untitled Three' and 'Alina'. In 'Untitled One' she photographed her subjects within 30 seconds of them waking up. They were told to wear certain clothes, and they slept in Zwehl's bed for the night, so she could quickly bring them in front of the screen where they were to be photographed. In 'Untitled Three' the subjects had to exert themselves physically for a certain amount of time, and then laid face up on the floor to be photographed. In 'Alina', Zwehl had her subjects sit with their arms folded, in a dark room, listening to a specially chosen peice of music which lasted about ten mintues. She then photographed them using flash, which was quick enough so their reaction to it wasn't seen in the final image. The interesting thing about 'Alina' (or perhaps not so interesting) is that half of the women are music students, and half aren't. Initially, she wanted to see if she there would be any contrast between the portraits of people who have been musically trained and those who haven't. There isn't really any contrast, so perhaps these are slightly unsuccessful. However it is clear in the images how the sitters are deeply immersed in the music. As for 'Untitled Two', I can't quite remember what the situation is there, but they are interesting. I think the subjects just sat in the dark for a while or something... can't remember.

Her 'Anatomy Of Control' work I also find ingriguing. Von Zwehl usually finds her subjects by walking around the streets and picking people who look like they would benifit the work. So, in this case she asked the permission of parents so she could photograph their children. The childern were left alone with the camera (behind a curtain), and a table if they wanted to sit. They were given a cable release so they could take their portrait themselves. Von Zwehl then paired images together according to how the child was posing. The results are very interesting. Some are so playful and ambiguous. I don't know how getting children to take their own portraits managed to work out so well (not because they are children, but it's that the idea is so delightfully simple, and the results are... not).

Bettina Von Zwehl's work is highly inspiring to me. A lot of her images hold a certain quietness, and others can be almost daunting. Most of her works have deffinately been successful in visually describing the event occuring, and at the same time, still leave a lot of room for questions. Very nice.


On a completely un-related matter, I present to you my latest graphic. It is sexy. Tssss. Like most of my best ideas, this image just came to me while I was going about my daily business. When that happens, I must expel the image and then thrust it upon the world. I think this is highly descriptive of her character. You can do nothing but agree. AGREE!

Photography: A Random Array of Images

I thought I'd share some of my work, past and present. Let us begin with this piece of work I did on my parents. As you can see, I got them both to stand in the dark holding a light in front of their face. Living with my parents can be a crippling annoyance, and sometimes they do seem like two faceless units that want only to control my life. At the same time, they are indeed guiding me down my path, and did get me where I am today. This is why I wanted their faces to be covered with a light specifically. I never followed through with this idea, partly because I didn't know where to go next, and working with my parents is... not enjoyable. That's not just because they are MY parents... anyone would get at least a bit annoyed if their subject said "Right, I'm getting tired now..." within 30 seconds of standing there. Stupid mother... cough. Anyway, I am quite pleased with how these images turned out. They are not impossible to get your head around, or so abiguous that you begin to ask, "Why should I care about these images?", which happens a bit too often with my work. I feel that quite often I am asked questions about my work that I am unable to answer, hence I deem that work unsuccessful. This is not the case here. These images came directly from me, so I know exactly how to answer any questions about it. If I make work based around subject matter which everyone knows different things about, I get uneasy because it can be more easily questioned or challenged. Although I try to ignore that feeling and do it anyway to see what happens...


Next is a selection of images from a body of work I did for the first project set for us at University. What I did was buy a pack of those little plastic army men, and set them up in a minature war scene. The terrain they are using is in fact the insides of my old computer. This work is meant to question the whole idea of war, and mock it, since it is in fact such a ridiculous idea. One of the most basic and obvious laws that all countries [attempt to] enforce is "Do not kill people", yet the apparently greatest nations in the world solve their problems (well, I use the word 'solve' very loosely) by doing just that... killing each other. So, I used toy soldiers to trivialise war. The computer parts were meant to be symbolic of modern day, but looking back, I don't see that there is much point in including them anymore. I think it was meant to sort of slightly point towards the fact that we have a very pointless war going on right in front of us as we speak. So what we see here is war in contemporary times. I'm still not sure how effective this work is. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.








These are actually the most recent images I've taken. They aren't part of a university project or anything, I just did them for fun. I thought I'd make a body of work lit only by the TV. I don't much know how to properly build on this idea, but I might get something later. So far I've just been taking long exposures of myself watching it. The two I've shown here are from the second attempt. The first time, the shutter button kept coming up (I was holding it down with tape), meaning the exposure was too short and they were too dark. I managed to hold down the shutter button more effectively this time. I did exposures of about 5 minutes. The shutter still got released without me doing it (using bulb setting can be annoying), but I found this was about the right amount of time. I think the bottom image is a bit too long. I like the bright electric-blue of the top image, which is contrasted nicely with the yellow of the door. So far all I see in these images is the fact that they are pleasing to the eye. I think if i try to persue this idea further, I could get something more. Incidentally, AFTER I started this idea, my dad told me about an article he read which spoke about a photographic exhibition which included images that were made using only the light of a television. Take that, everyone.


Laslty, (I was going to add a couple more before this one, but I'm getting tired) an image I took nearly a year ago now, which can easily be seen as a reference to Cartier Bresson's 'Decisive Moment'. At the time, I wasn't at all familiar with Cartier Bresson, but now I see this photograph is actually a good example of The Decisive Moment. A way to explain it would be a specific moment in time which holds two things: the point where the subjects within the frame have reached their aesthetic peak, and the point in the event that is happening has reached the [for lack of a better word] moment that best describes the event. I hope that makes sense... I might edit that sentance when I'm less tired. Anyway, I believe this image is a nice example of that. Though you can see how this image captured the moment when the event was at its aethsetic peak, the event itself is not very interesting. It's just two guys talking, and then agreeing on something (hence the touching hands), while one says nothing, and another has his hood up in a strange fashion because he was bored. I still love this image though.