feeling like william tell

i have news! a couple of weeks back i spoke to my cousin alice who's been working on tour with the band squeeze (up the junction, cool for cats - for those who don't know). turns out they want students dealing with all this media lark to interpret their songs and make a video to show when they're on tour. basically, make them a music video. where do i sign?

al gave me the list of tracks & i got first dibs, therefore i chose pulling mussels from a shell. still toying around with ideas but its gonna be a "having a lark at the seaside" type affair. so, who wants to be in a video?! give me a shout at emmie_turner@hotmail.com if you're up for it. also if you have a car you're willing to transport people to the seaside in, that would be fab. hopefully, this should be a really exciting project.

and for those not familiar, here's the track itself:

but the panic is oooooon now!

i have five & a half days until presentation time - six if you include the rest of today but for fear of becoming complacent, i won't. here is the state of play:

i have two very strong images (two top) and one not so much that i might just disregard (bottom). the idea of the project is still very much about the dysfunctional family but less about my nonna. actually, it's not even slightly about my nonna anymore. don't worry, i haven't abandoned her, i'm still gonna visit her and take photos just for my personal stuff. its about those moments where we pass eachother in our own homes. the lack of communication and division between spaces. it's not supposed to be in an extremely serious way, it's just an observation of my own family & therefore probably rings true of many other families - i hope!? for this reason i'm shooting through door frames, isolating with flash lighting, in focus/out of focus - all that malarky.

this weekend i intend on shooting more so that i have a series, but there is a slight twist to the scenearios i'm setting up so watch this space!

and just to keep my spirits up, a fitting tune referenced in the titling of this blog!

very quickly

rosie is about to pick me up for an afternoon of shopping BUT i've just discovered elaine constantine (one of my alltime favourite photographers) is in the process of directing a new film, 'Northern Soul'. you can guess what it's about.

i think its going to be my favourite film. modculture.com are raving about it. here's the official website. if it's anything like the moloko video she directed for familiar feeling, then it ought to be amazing. cannot wait.

300 photos later

fashion shoot virginity officially taken. was working with becca for her "just-make-an-entire-magazine-in-three-weeks-thanks" project. the brief: crack den/american apparel. i had fun.

excuse me but...

can you just witness the fitness please? i love him so much.

that is all.

reeeeewind.

had an absolutely blinding evening/early morning at the new jackpot clubnight this saturday. tiny room + good music x the right people = big atmosphere. here's some of my drunken photography to accompany it. in future, remind me to not mix strongbow & vodka with the onset of a cold. can you also remind me of the importance of removing lens caps as well? i guess we must suffer for our art.

and now for something completely different...

i know i've already made a lengthy post today but i just thought i'd record the fact that today, for the first time, a series of images actually brought a real, honest tear to my eye.

i have just finished my research paper on exploring family relations through photography. my research rather morbidly lead me to look at victorian post-mortem photography. the recently dead were photographed in a way that made them appear to be asleep and even posed with their families. all very strange indeed. today, it is fair to say, this would be considered taboo.



after the trauma of the research paper was over, i looked into it more for my own interest and found maeve berry's series 'incandescent', who deals with a more contemporary take on the idea of post-mortem. these images are taken in a cremetorium. the above image evoked such a strong sense of discomfort that it caused me to well-up. i don't think that's ever happened to me before with another photographer's work. its not even to say that i like the work or find it beautiful. it upsets me, but i found myself trying to recognise some part of the human form and when i did, i was shocked and slightly distraught. yet i put myself through it!? is baptism by fire too crude a turn of phrase to be used here? i think so. but i'm gonna use it anyway.

enlightenment

after a hectic wednesday morning running round central london, auditioning for coach trip, burning my mouth with nandos, getting lost in the maze of lily's soon to be university and watching a white pentioner beat up a young black male in elephant and castle, i managed to gather my thoughts and head back to rochester for a much needed tutorial with jonathan.

"at what stage are we here, in the sense of critism?" jonathan asks tentatively.
"please tell me exactly what you think. i don't even care. well no, that's a lie. i care about the work, which is exactly why i don't care what you say about it. the more critism, the better." at which jonathan was pleased to hear.

we went around about a million different routes the work could now take. they're nice images at the moment, but don't say a lot. questions:
do the shots of nonna need to be more spontaneous?
is it about the found family photographs?
the gaps in my knowledge of my family's history?
my frustration that i don't feel apart of it?
is it even about nonna?
is it, actually, my relationship to my father and the rest of the family that is of importance?

honestly, i think it's the later. the fascination lies with the lack of female intervention and relationship to environment. i think the work has gone too far down the toledano line of making compassionate images of my grandmother, just because i love her. compositionally, they are strong and to me they mean the world but i think what i'm trying to say is more sociological -as with all the work i make so i don't know why this should be such a discovery! i guess when the subject of your work is something so emotionally charged, sometimes it is difficult to step back an be objective but hey! that's art for you.

the next step is this: individual portraits of my father, my uncles and my nonno. i need to relate them to their very seperate environments and compare them with one another. references are as follows:

alec soth - juxaposing subject with the space. sometimes comically.

also here is a link to toby granville's portraiture work. i can't be bothered to screen print the images so just have a butcher's at you're own leisure.

i'm gonna do some test shots of my dad and my nonno this weekend so i will post the results asap.