Exam Unit- Trip - Juergen Teller & Man Ray Exhibitions

We also visited the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Man Ray was born in 1890 in Philadelphia, in 1921 went to france and spent most of his career there. He considered himself as a painter. He worked a lot with photograms which he later called ''rayograms'' referenced to himself.

Le Violan D'ingres, 1934 Photograms that were inspired by paintings. Kiki, then later musical notes were photogrammed on her body.  I really liked the soft light coming in from the top left corner and the soft focus of the image. The composition on the image is perfect and our main focus of the image is the model. He then adds another layer by adding a photogram which makes the image more visually interesting. The reason why I chose this image as I really like image of figures and is something that I want todo myself which is why it was one of my favourite. This was put in a nice frame on a small wall with a dark background. Myself I would put them on a white background as I feel this would make the images more powerful.

"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence." — Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981.

Image of Lee Miller, 1929. Who was a photographer and ex lover of Many Ray. The two experimented with solarisation. I really like this image as it a strong portrait and can really see the lines. The solarisation has highlight and darkened key areas. I really like the image as it seems very soft and pretty and gentle, maybe symbolic of the person. This has inspired to go back to the solarised effect and really produce some beautiful images.

Marie, Lawerencin, 1923
I chose this image because of the dramatic lighting.
after exposure in the darkroom the contrast is really good with the black  and
white and give the image quite a dark and mysterious mood. It makes me wonder what the
women is thinking an who she is? The image is very mysterious to me which is why I chose it.  

Juergen Teller has an exhibitions at the ICA gallery. Since the 90s Teller has been involved in commercial photograph and Art. He moved to London when he was 22. He uses contax G2 cameras with an onboard flash. He has had many different exhibition all over the world and is very influential today. He has worked with iconic celebrities such as Lily Cole, Kurt Cobain and Vivienne Westwood. 

Cerith, Suffolk 2011. I chose this photo to analyse as it reminds me of a old family photo.
Old man looking lifeless in bed with candles holding many coloured balloons. I really liked the contrast
of the models lying down on the bed and the bright balloons looking full of energy ready to escape. This was displayed big singularly on a wall. I thought because of the colours of the balloons this is what drew my attention first off as I entered the room. I think the composition and framing could be better and to really bring out the colours of the balloons I would have used some more lighting as the flash hasn't really brought out as much colour as it could have. 

Victoria Beckham in a Marc Jacobs bag for a campaign in LA 2007,
This was displayed on a small wall on it's own. I really enjoyed looking at this image as
her face was hidden and we couldn't see who it was un till you read the caption beneath and fund out it
was Victoria Beckham.

This was the first image I saw in the gallery. Automatically it drew my attention as I prefer black and white images over colour. I also really liked the fact that it was so close, and to me was symbolic of the time with his guitar. This was taken 1999, whilst on tour with Kurt Cobain in Berlin. This image really show the era of Rock and Roll, and the mood was calm and mellow whilst enjoying the music. This was blown up big and I felt this was the right thing todo and it made the piece even more powerful. I also felt that being the first image in the gallery that you see that this could suggest that this was also Teller's favourite piece of work.


In the gallery there was also a framing room with lots of images posting over the walls like a collage effect. This was all of Teller commercial fashion work and contained lots of images of naked women. There was an image of a women lying on a bed with her make up smudged smoking a cigarette. This image particularly caught my attention and I eventually went back to that image after I looked around the room. I felt like this was relevant to my exam starting point inner character. It was such a raw natural image symbolising the morning after the night before this really inspired to take more natural image that isn't been put together to look pretty and is taken there and then whatever it looks like.

I really enjoyed going into the framing room because I liked the burst of images everywhere and it was exciting to not know where to looks you were bombarded with all types of images. I preferred the framing to the other parts of the gallery where few images were blown up really big onto white walls. I felt that having the selection of image plastered of the walls with the same theme was very powerful and definitely my favourite part of the exhibition


Overall, I think I enjoyed the presentation of Teller's exhibition more as it was more interesting to look at. I felt like Man Ray's was quite boring and there was a lot to look at so you lost focus very quickly. With Teller's work the white walls and being blown in your face was more visually pleasing for me. Man Ray work was very small scale and a lot of it. In Terms of work I did preferred Man Ray as it was more tradition and very good use of darkroom techniques. Where as Tellers work was very modern and digital work. For me I always prefer black and white prints so it was easy to chose Man Ray's over Teller's just for me I would have presented it the way Teller did.