Inspiration of the Week - Sylvia de Swaan

Sylvia de Swaan is a photographer born in Romania in 1941, at age ten she immigrated to the United States. She has also lived and worked in Europe and Mexico. Her work is usually focused around specific projects and follows themes that are common to her work. These themes are: identity, personal history, individualism and collective memory.

The project that I am going to look at is her photography series titled Return.

In these series of photographs she looks back on her Jewish heritage and her Eastern European background. In some of her images she uses a combination of old photographs and images from her journey. Some of these pictures are taken on the train journey between destinations, this shows de Swaan’s physical journey, but could also symbolise her spiritual journey into her heritage and ancestry as she returns to her family’s home.

In my next project I am looking into doing a sort of journey and also how to document some of it. These photographs are very interesting and document a lot more than writing down words could.

I also feel that they aren't typical documentary photographs but the viewer is still able to follow the narrative of the journey.

I am also still looking for a purpose for my work and I think that Sylvia de Swaan's purpose here is very personal and poignant as she is going on a journey retracing her family' journey.

NB - all photographs here have been taken from the artist's site:
http://www.sylviadeswaan.com/
http://www.sylviadeswaan.com/return
I do not own any of the pictures on this post.

Until next time,
byyyyyeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x

Chapter 4 - The Slides

So my slides for my box consisted of black mounting board, black cartridge paper and a map on either acetate or tracing paper.

To make the map to give to my family to fill out, I took some screenshots of off google maps and then edited them so that map was only a black line to mark the roads. After each of my family members filled them out, I traced what they had written on either acetate or tracing paper, these were the maps that were going to go on the inside of the slides. To make them more secure and to protect the writing I laminated them.

I had tried out different methods of making the slides to see what would be the most secure and least flimsy to put on display. I found that cutting a window out of mounting board to be the most secure and suitable albeit it was the most expensive method. For the backing this didn't need to be as solid so I used black cartridge paper.

The process of making the slides was simple enough, however it was time consuming and was murder on my hands as I was having to be precise with the scalpel a lot of the time. I had took all the measurements to make sure the slide would be in the centre of the box and from this I made a template that I would follow and draw out all the slides from this rather than having to measure out all of the time. From the mounting board I cut out the shape and then the window for each of them and followed this same process for the cartridge paper.

After this was all done I found that to make the slide completely centred I would need to take off 5mm from the bottom of each of them. To do this I just used the guillotine and also used this to neaten and square off the edges.

In the next post I'll talk about the set up of my box - we're getting close to the end now :)

bbbbyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Róisín -x

Protest is over!!

So I know that I haven't blogged in a while but life has been quite stressful these past few weeks plus I'm currently ill at the moment, so fun times. I have managed to stay on track so far and completed everything for my protest hand in. My essay is also pretty much done, I just need to look over a couple things then it's just a case of printing it, binding it and submitting it, which can be done tomorrow worse comes to worse, but that's fine. I have also got an extension for my integrated project, so my new submission date is Monday the 8th. I'm glad that this is the date that I got, as it gives me two full weekends to blitz it.

Anyway the main point of this post is to show off my protest final. The title of this series is 'V is for Victory'

The main point of this piece is to show that in war there are no victors. As even on the 'winning' side, there is still death and destruction. I used the 'V is for Victory' stamp, as with war the victors often stamp that war as 'won' and that is it, case closed. We forget the pain and death that comes with war and focus on what we gained from atrocities. The wars that I focused on were WW I, WWII, Iraq and Afghanistan as I have lived through both Afghanistan and Iraq  and grew up with images of these wars on the news. And WWI and II are obviously the most infamous and are taught in school and had the biggest effect on the world, so these are the main four wars that have had some sort of effect on my life, and are the wars that have spawned my anti- war protest. I am really pleased with how this final piece turned out, I just wish that I had a little more time to work on the drawings, but I think that they are still good.  I also like how this is a series that I can continue, as this 'V is for Victory' Stamp can be applied to any war.

One of the main things that I learned from this process was problems that can arise from a stencil. Because I decided to put the writing on my drawings one after the other, the last couple look pretty grubby. So I think if I was to use a stencil for something else in future, I would either give myself enough time between painting for the paint to dry, or get a stencil that I can clean.


So that's all for now, I will keep you updated on how my integrated project is going over the next few days.
Byyeee!
Until next time -
Róisín -x

Life Drawing Images

So when we had our life drawing classes, I never got a chance to take photographs of them, so here hey are now - and only a year or so after I did them ;)