Assignement for my History of photography class.
I had to do a photograph in the style of Joel Peter Witkin.
“Witkin is an American photographer that works mostly with the marginalized people of society, the forgotten, the deformed, the handicapped and so on…
His photographs tend to be dramatic and not unlike a romantic renaissance painting, with elements careful disposed around the scene to create a mysterious and holy tale inspired by the oldest myths of man.“
“Jean Guy you are a stuped
man one day
you will will
know why man”
Very few information is available about the Church of the parish of St-Germain in Outremont. Built in 1911, St-Germain church would have been built to accommodate the growing need for more roman catholic cult locations (Outremont had seen its french population increase at the end of the 19th century, wich increased the proportion of catholics in the municipality). Prior to the construction, some of the catholics of Outremont had to attends masses in the church of Notre-dame-de-la-cote-des-neiges parish.
Peu d’informations circulent sur l’église de la paroisse de St-Germain d’Outremont. Construite en 1911, l’église St-Germain aurait eu pour but de permettre aux fidèles catholiques d’Outremont (qui s’est rapidement francisé à la fin du 19e siècle, augmentant la proportion de catholiques dans la municipalité) d’avoir un lieu de culte et une paroisse situés près d’eux. Les fidèles s’étant autrefois parfois rendu jusqu’à la paroisse de la Notre-dame-de-la-côte-des-neiges pour se recueuillir.
Photo montage realized for my studio class and my photoshop class:
I used this image as the basis of the montage, shot from the top of the school:
Then, in the studio, I recreated the same lightning and shot little toys at the same angles on a “seamless” grey background:
Then, I had to integrate the little cars and the little man in the other image. The integration of all the elements was the most tedious and it took a couple of hours (and scrapped montages) to finally come to a pleasing result.
I’m pretty happy with the result of that assignment as it allowed me to explore and experiment in montages, construction of realities and integration of elements of different scales that give a slightly bizzare aspect to the image. I plan on exploring more in that vein and next time, add human scaled elements into a miniature environment.
The city.
“They are turning our atmosphere into their atmosphere”.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live)
This is Plaza Hotel.
When photographed, the “Plaza Hotel” sign reads “Do not question authority”.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live)
It was a crude photographic device wich we had built on that day, but it was one of our first steps towards a clearer glimpse of the truth.
Not that they would have let us anyways, if only they had known.
Not as practical as the glasses, this camera still allowed us not only to see what they were hiding, but to record it.
This structure appeared to us, without any windows or doors, in the middle of a fenced concrete lot, amidst flying newspapers whose headlines read simply as “Obey”.
(To get a better understanding of this post, it is recommended that you read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live)
This is my first study for the second Dinofuck collective project (the image was shot in pigeonland).
The theme of that assignement was “Aberration”. My first step before trying decide on a photograph I would make was to really get a good feeling of what the word “aberration” really means:
