Alison Jackson

Alison Jackson's work has been relevant for some time, both in the art world and in popular culture. Her work embodies the cult of celebrity as well as the bombardment of imagery in the media. Jackson makes work using people and actors who look like celebrities, politicians and other people in the public eye otherwise known as lookalikes. She creates images and scenes with the lookalikes that we've all imagined but the paparazzi have never managed to capture such as the Queen on the toilet or Tony Blair in a sex shop.
Jackson also questions the truth of the image and how we cannot believe all that is printed in the press. There is also an element of voyeurism in most of Alison's work as she recreates the blurry effect you get from a zoom lens and the obstacles that may get in the way of the perfect shot.

Her website is jam packed with work and is constantly being updated to reflect the constant churning out of celebrity images both online and in print. 

I think her website will be the main inspiration for my magazine cover as it's not too in in-the-face and subtle but still has the same feeling I get from Hello magazine.com or any other celeb websites.

Mid review feedback

Not a lot of different feedback was received when I participated in our first mid-review. I just received comments reiterating my initial ideas that I presented to the group.

• To portray a stereotype of celebrity instead of specific people. This will remove the 'lookalikey' element and enhance the fact that anyone can be a celebrity in their own right these days which takes the project into a satirical concept. 

• A magazine type of presentation would be key. Again, enhancing the satirical element targetting the 'cheapness' of the media and the obsession of the celebrity that has some how become newsworthy. 

There was also a suggestion of exaggerating a personal scandal. Maybe set in the university bar or at home. Blowing things way out of proportion like the media does may give the magazine an element of 'reality' but I'm not sure how to present the scandal in a believable way.

Blank City

Blank City(Celine Danhier, 2011) is an oral history of No-Wave cinema. No-Wave was a boom in underground filming on the Lower East Side of 1970's New York. The main concentration of these films was enhanced moods and textures of the time. It was highly influenced by the current music scene and poverty of the time. Because of the wide spread poverty, the film makers(John Lurie, Nick Zedd, Amos Poe etc) partaking in the scene would make a film on an incredible budget of $100 or less.

I've watched this film twice in two days after being recommended it by a friend. I am so inspired by this generation of film makers, musicians actors and writers that it makes me feel this kind of regret for not being present (twenty years before I was born...). It also makes me wonder whether this type of scene can happen in todays modern world. Since the widespread use of the internet, I feel like there's a very small chance of these kinds of scenes (punkrock, new romantics etc) being able to thrive before being packaged and sold back to us by the media. And it depresses the hell out of me. 

I really want to take inspiration from the energy and inventiveness in this film and mix it into my project by enhancing the DiY authenticity elements of the finished product.

'Leaked' photoshoot

In reference to my last post, I went through my own library of phone photos from my private life and edited down to the ones people would want to see if I was a celebrity.

 'Sally Harris' behind the scenes on a weekend bender leaked cell phone photos'

 'Leaked cell phone photos of no-make up Sally Harris!'

'Steamy leaked cell phone photos of Sally Harris wearing a bra!'


It helped to imagine overblown magazine headlines when picking these three images. I feel like they need to be framed in the garish graphics that you would find in 'trashy' magazines to work. This exercise has inspired me to do a shoot using my mobile phone camera and emulating celebrity leaked photos. Maybe these can be the first 'genre' of photography found in these types of magazines that I can polish and use for the actual fake magazine.

Leaked celebrity photos

You can't go a week these days without hearing about some celebrity getting their phone hacked into and private photographs leaked on to the web. There's also a tonne of fake imagery that is churned out containing celebrities heads terribly Photoshopped onto stock imagery of naked bodies. I find this the most bizarre but curious thing about the celebrity in the world of the media.
Most of the time, these photographs contain nudity. What I want to know is;
-Why, if you're famous, would you take naked photographs of yourself on a mobile phone if you knew that people would be able to sell these images for profit?
-Why is society so wrapped up in knowing the celebrity is just a 'normal person'; that a photograph proving the fact they're human turns everyone on so much?

There are lists and lists of google search finds of websites dedicated to leaked celebrity photographs. Is this a new way of self promotion? Creating a drama around a certain celebrity when coincidentally, the said celebrity has a new book or film or album out to sell?

Trish Morrissey - Seven Years

Artist statement   -

"Seven Years (2001-2004) aims to deconstruct the trope of family photography by meticulously mimicking it. In the series, the title of which refers to the age gap between the artist and her elder sister, Morrissey functions as director, author and actor, staging herself and her sibling in tightly controlled, fictional mis en scene based on the conventions of family snapshots.
In order to construct images that appear to be authentic family photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, Morrissey uses period clothing and props, both her own and others, and the setting of her family's house in Dublin. They assume different characters and roles in each image, utilizing body language to reveal the subtext of psychological tensions inherent in all family relations. The resulting photographs isolate telling moments in which the unconscious leaks out from behind the façade of the face and into the minute gestures of the body."

 Quote taken from trishmorrissey.com/works

This work was suggested to me in my second tutorial on this unit. I was aware of referencing Morrissey's other series called 'Front' where she impersonates a mother in found families on a beach and has the family portrait taken, but I feel this series resonates with me a lot more, especially for this project.

I love how she uses the props and the location (her family's house) to echo the feel of 70's and 80's family snapshots. The clothes and the poses also help a lot and make me think of my own family's album (photos of my mum and dad in the 70's) which will always invoke a sense of affection and reminiscence. The ability to tap in to that mindset of an audience is something very inspiring to me.

I want to take pointers from this work of how a certain style of shooting and direction can alter the feel of an image. With their being so many parts of a celebrity magazine, photography wise, I feel like I can adequately explore all different styles of shooting with the correct location, camera and props.
 

Work book progress;

I hadn't really found a clear direction to go in after these two initial first shoots. I just wanted to shoot and see what I'd get from the images, but I didn't anticipate not getting anything at all from them both.
So I created a mind map of what I linked to celebrities and photography and began coming up with ideas and finally being able to visualize a final piece. 

 (Mind map from workbook)

(Mood board from mind map, in my workbook)

Second initial shoot

Again, like with the first initial shoot I did, I just wanted to shoot something and experiment along the way. These are my four favorite shots. I shot them with natural daylight in the golden hour of the afternoon against a plain wall in my room. I love the light flooding in from one side and how it hits my hair and face.
Like the first shoot, I don't think the content of these images specifically say something to me so I'm going to do more research to see if I can come up with a visual in my head for the final piece to work towards.

First initial shoot

I really felt like I needed to shoot something after our introduction lecture. I worked on the idea of authorship and the stereotypes I see in my fellow photographers.
I really like the style of these images but they don't say a lot to me. I also really like the diptych format I've used.

15 minutes of fame

The definition of the phrase 'fifteen minutes of fame' explains short-lived media publicity, phenomenon or celebrity of an individual. The phrase was coined by the artist Andy Warhol who said something along the lines of 'In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes'. 
It's believed that this expression is an adaptation of a theory of Marshall McLuhan who explained the differences between television and other media by the use of contestants.

Warhol also hosted a show on the TV network MTV called 'Andy Warhols fifteen minutes' that aired from 1985 to 1987. The show featured interviews from musicians such as Courtney Love.

Link to Andy Warhol's 15 minutes advert


If I want to tackle critiqueing the celebrity image we know today, I think it will be best to look at the history behind the celebrity culture and how we've put 'reality' stars to Hello! magazine status. 

I'm going to use the phrase '15 minutes of fame' as a working title as it's sums up what I'm trying to achieve with this project better than I could've done in my own words.

Proposal

I am looking to work on an expansion of a recent project that consisted of ten iconic portraits of famous females portrayed by myself. The final series of work was displayed in a zine, mimicking the DIY music zones of the '70s, but I also explored film, newspaper prints and framed pieces.  I would like to further my exploration into both film and printing in newspaper format.
I want to keep the original boundaries of the project as my own surroundings as I still want that 'teenage' feel of pretending to be a celebrity.
I would also want to experiment with portraying male celebrities as well as female.

Resources I envisage being required are magazines and images from the 1960's till the present day to configure who I will represent and also what was there most iconic 'look'. Also other resources may include TV & film, music lyrics and album artwork from the era of which they are best known from.
I want to improve my skills in digital manipulation of images as well as using the moving image to capture the essence of impersonating a celebrity.
I do also want to experiment with analogue photography as my last project was based in digital photography due to it being the most cost effective.

My aim is to have a few polished shots by the first mid-review as well as have at least one piece of filming done and edited to be shown. Research wise, I will be researching as I go along to adequately explore my ideas, both to start and ideas that I come across along the way.

I would like to achieve a direct critique on the celebrity and the celebrity in the media, I want this to be a clear statement from my work.