Methodology Notes

Methodology - The way that you research something

Method - The way you achieve your finished product

Jackson Pollock 

- gestural painting

- Summertime: Number 9A 1948

Robert Rauschenberg

- untitled 1963
- 1996

Christo and Jeanne Claude - Over the River
Christo & The Arkansas

Catherine Yass
- Lighthouse 2011
- Corridors 1994

Ori Gersht - Evaders, Far Off Mountains and Rivers

Helen Sear
- Sightlines - 2011
- Twice Once

Mark Power
- The Shipping Forecast

Hiroshi Sugimoto
- Lighting Fields.

Rob and Nick Carter
- Paint Pigment Photograph

Gillian Wearing
- Self Portrait 2003

Adam Fuss
- Untitled 2007

Mike and Doug Stark
- Attracted to Light

Sandra Kantanen
"Shadow images" Plato

Marina Abramovic - Female Conformity

Whilst looking through notes, I came across a performance/video by Marina Abramovic that tells of feminist conformity. In this video, starring herself, Abramovic repeats a saying "Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful". Through this repetition, the audience is almost put into a trance of reflection upon the words she speaks, and as a result, you can begin to see the psychotic murmurs within herself. 

Here you shall see an image which is essentially a 'contact sheet' of clips taken from the video she has produced:

FRAMES OF THE VIDEO - Marina Abramovic brushing her hair

After this repetitive process has had time to sink in, you notice the subtle messages of 'conformity' leak out onto you. Her hair is continuously brushed in an effort to remain relevant among society. The process of repeating this implies an insanity that many females have to deal with in their own individual way on a daily basis. Abramovic sustains this intensity through constant brushing, and with a cycle like this, you can never find a resolution.

This attitude and behaviour saddens me, the idea that females must present themselves on a repetitive basis creates needless effort for an audience who may or may not be asking it of them. Those who are expecting such things should reconsider their values and why it matters, and as for those who aren't they can easily speak of their indifference towards make-up and 'dress up' in general. When a girl goes out thinking 'dress to impress', they promote the visual presentation without making room for the inner personality to shine through.

Aesthetically speaking, the underlying message isn't immediately available, and I like that. The imagery is calm and constructed, yet the message builds up over healthy reflection. This practice is something I shall aim to incorporate within my final images.

Further Inspirational Images

Similar to Rhiannon Schneiderman's previous photo I had shown, this one declares individualism and strength in one's uniqueness. The hairy legs play as a binary opposite to the painted nails, showing the dual self-image within one. The series "Lady Manes" has images similar to this on her personal website.

As the writing in the photograph explains it, self-esteem is strongly affected by the words and reactions that society throws at us. Dressing yourself up isn't compulsory, nor is it expected. These thoughts are often expressed or seen time and time again. 

This image does not represent something that was intended for this subject, but I feel its relevance was high towards my project. The transformation she is undergoing alters her lips' colour and shine, covering up the natural beauty of an untouched pair of lips. Beauty can be found everywhere if you look hard enough, and this image shows the covering up of a great example. 

For me there is a sense of irony within this photo that I found. The face has been drenched in make-up, and the woman appears to be enduring what looks like a painfully precise moment. The eyes have become something else. They no longer shine the colour of skin, but merely show an unnecessary sense of extras where they are clearly an annoyance - this annoyance may not stop females from presenting themselves differently, as some may feel it is a necessity for acceptance.

In this image taken as a screenshot from an asian TV programme, you can see a women has applied make-up to one of her eyes whilst leaving the other blank. Looking into it, you can find that the girl endures 'eyelid taping' as a way to make her eyes look bigger and therefore more captivating. The fact that an individual would go through great lengths to better her appearance for the sake of improvement for onlookers makes me sad. Other things mentioned around this subject was plastic surgery, and how that was an 'option' to make improvements.

'Double Identity' - Initial Research

Now that I have an initial start for my idea, I have began exploring the further development, to specify what the idea is, and what I'm going to produce at the end. Researching the terms of feminist self-image and double identity I have come across many artist/photographers that can aid my project's momentum. Double identity can be a result of social gatherings encouraging certain behaviours and demanding fashions that transform you for the sake of a greater conformity. This split lifestyle can be seen throughout culture and the world.

MELANIE KLEIN - Healing (my) Mind, Body & Spirit.

The first artist who I came across, Melanie Klein, who in this image chooses to show a double identity through a mirrored reflection of a female character. As she sits there, she is seen reflecting upon her own physical image, exploring expressions along the way. Upon further inspection, you can see that the character has lipstick and a hairbrush, among other things, that clearly shows the experimentation of alternating your own appearance. For me, this shows that many young females are exposed to this lifestyle of alternation, showing that (for some reason) females tend to apply facial modifications, along with hair that has gone through its own transformation. These explorations distill an ideal that encourages you to be something more than yourself - aka, wear make up.

GEOFF CORDNER - I'm Sorry That I Think

This next photographer I found has a different take on the harm that identity endures. This depiction of a naked female with her own thoughts written on her skin shows that a fragility has taken damage. The nudity of the female exposes a mortality that physically takes on the words of those who say hateful things. Written upon her body, you can see thoughts and feelings that are reactions within her mind to those things that are inflicted against her, this shows the power that words can have, both against her and from her own thoughts. To me, this shows a battle that greatly involves and affects her appearance, that her body absorbs the words spoken to her, be it positive or in this case negative. This work can influence or indeed empower the idea of a double identity, presenting yourself as two different people according to who you're with. As an extension of this particular image, there is also a great screenshot within One Tree Hill, which is an American television drama, showing one of the main characters showing a similar image:

As you can see, the words of people are inflicted upon you, and the exposure of that can be enlightening for those who do not know of the implications their words have upon somebody.

RHIANNON SCHNEIDERMAN - A self portrait from the "Lady Manes" series

This photograph in particular empowers the woman with one identity, showing only your true self. The idea here is that she exaggerates the imperfections brilliantly, as a response to the expected conformity that the male society has come to expect of females. The retaliation is clearly seen through the use of scruffy hair, a stern expression, and particular outgoing rugged footwear. This attacks that idea of expectation and with the aid of her own self, shows an accelerated pubic growth which may be seen as an abnormality. The male audience may shudder at the idea, but it does create a memorable image. 

This presentation is firmly set on showing individualism through a constructed image. For my project, I wish for a more considerate, documentative approach that allows the audience to see both sides of a story, without creating bias.

Methodology concept: Double Identity

After looking at all of my ideas, I can confirm that my idea will be called 'Double Identity' and will be focusing on females. Female culture throughout the history is known for its dualism of personality, presenting one ideal whilst at social occasions and gatherings, while contrastingly being somebody of minimal 'presentation' when they aren't outside. It's almost as if they feel compelled towards dressing up in order to fit in. The name 'Double Identity' goes right to the point - I want to explore the idea that females display a dual personality, either through necessity, conformity, or simply for confidence - all of which derive from the same issue.

Through this exploration, I hope to perform first hand 'research' that will provide me with the results of this hypothesis, so that I and many others may discover the truth behind this dual personality issue, and whether it is something significant that we should consider more.

Methodology Creative Process

In a lecture covering the Methodology brief, we as a whole group of photography students were encouraged to think of 10 quick ideas within 1 minute to empower our creative process and come up with some initial ideas to focus on at the preliminary stage of our development process.

In the list, I came up with these quick ideas:

• Timeless locations - Looking at locations that never change, despite an ever advancing world. This would likely focus on places that are surrounded by technologically advanced areas, but the place itself doesn't. Wasn't sure about how strong of an idea this was.

• Fractal's in Nature - This project would focus on the natural patterns that you could find within nature itself, namely fractals, symmetry, and similar stuff. This idea would need more depth and more of an objective.

• Double identity - Essentially this idea stemmed from 'the portrait is a lie' which was my essay title, I am exploring and experimenting with the idea that females present themselves in two different lights - a casual hidden and care-free appearance usually at home, and a dressed up, modified version of themselves when 'out' at clubs or parties. This idea calls for an open discussion about make-up and natural beauty. 

Ultimately I wanted to explore the 'Double Identity' task more, as it's exposure would help people consider that girls are not explicitly required to present themselves as something they are not, where they could just as easily go to outings with a more natural appearance. 

Editing Process & Final Image

[As we all worked together on research, this blog post originally came from Lily's blog - as this was the blog we used to output all things relevant. This is a repost of what we ALL did]


It took a while to filter though all of our images and select out a few for our final edit.

We chose these images because of all round qualities such as characterisation, lighting and outfit choice. From these we chose to base our final decision based on the characterisation as this is the key to our narrative and the main intention of our shoot.

Other images were unsuccessful as when we first began shooting we had trouble with the characterisation of our model and getting the correct pose and expression to match our storyline. We did not select others because of the way the lighting was falling on the model as this caused distorted shadows.
We decided on this image as we were struggling with the “gaze”, but as the model got into it she began trying a wider range of expressions and we thought the sadder, pitiful side to our character was something that could potentially be more powerful and emotive. We liked the utilisation of a prop as well as it links her to the set and provides an explanation for them. The way you see her leg makes the image more typically fashion as well, as itsexualises and glamourises her.

We went about editing this by mapping out the small details that could be changed without changing the whole image completely as this would defeat the object of the whole project.

This is our final edited image. (There are colour and quality issues with this exact one because of the transfer onto here!)