Upon showing my photographs to my peers, the one complaint that seemed to be unanimous was the inability to zoom in on the Instagram photographs. For that reason, I decided to create a Tumblr blog to take my photo series live.
The theme I chose is very simple, with the photographs presented through a large format slideshow. This was an aesthetic decision made based upon observing my friends and peers go through the Instagram account. I noticed that, instead of seeing each photograph as an entity of its own, everyone seemed to go through them with the rapid scrolling action often done when going through an Instagram account.
The reason why I decided to use this platforms is because Tumblr is more dynamic than Instagram, allowing users to enlarge the photos and view them individually instead of as part of a “newsfeed”. Tumblr is also very mobile-friendly, and since most people consume things through their mobile phones I thought it would be a good idea to cater to that as well.
As my project is progressing forward, I decided to set up an Instagram account where my test photos will be displayed to the public. I wanted to do this mainly as way to get feedback from my peers, as well as to see how the final photographs would look like as a complete set.
For lack of any other names, I called the account takeawayflatlay. This will most probably be changed very soon, as I don’t think it makes any sense.
I came across this video today, and found that it relates quite a lot to my project. The fact that they unanimously reiterated the fact that fame, wealth, and material possessions led to them feeling unhappy and empty inside correlates to the idea behind my photographs. Consuming expensive food, riding expensive cars and flying privately adds to the person’s image, but leaves the soul hungry and empty.
My project idea has evolved a little more upon doing more research and looking into more examples of photographers’ work. The theoretical grounds stand unchanged, where my photo series will explore consumerist culture and over-indulgence by portraying commodities and activities one consumes on a day to day basis, as explained by Zygmunt Bauman’s Modern Consumerist Culture concept.
Visually, my idea has flip flopped a lot between still life and narrative, and has finally landed on a combination of both. The aesthetic style of the photographs will essentially be a table top layout, with each photo portraying a different scenario and a different commodity, i.e. food, clothes, coffee, etc. The narrative aspect would be within each photo by making the overall scene tell a story, as well as through using a hand model to interact with the props and bring the whole scene to life. I reached this conclusion after looking at Sandro Giordano‘s Extremis series and Guido Mocafico‘s Nature Morte, and realised that I liked the two styles equally. Cindy Sherman‘s narrative photographs inspired the single photo narrative style, where each photograph would tell a different story instead of having the whole series tell the same story.
My search for the best style to portray my project idea has led me to the modern photography trend of Flatlay, which has proven very popular on social media over the past year or so.
Flat Lay, or ‘Knolling’ as it was originally called in the 80’s, has been around for over three decades now. It was first used by designers working for a furniture brand called Knoll, which was known for creating angular furniture. The style has only become widely used for non-branding reasons when bloggers began using it to showcase things they had bought or products they use to their followers.
This style of photography has become pretty popular recently, especially on social media like Instagram and Pinterest. Besides being visually pleasing, it also serves the purpose of showcasing more items per photograph, making it ideal for branding and advertising, as well as outright showing off.
After reading posts by Vogue and Refinery29 on how to take the perfect flat lay photo, I gathered the most important things I need to keep in mind while taking my photographs.
Lighting: It’s preferable to use lighting from a big window and keep artificial lighting to a minimum. This gives the photos an overall crisp, clean look.
Background: Keep the background plain and simple. Popularly used are white tables, floorboards, or pastel wallpapers. Any clutter in the background will deter the focus from the main objects.
Keep it in place: A good trick to use when photographing things that may roll away (i.e. lipstick, marbles, etc…) is to use blu tack to stick them in place.
Composition: Make sure the props and items being used are spaced out. The purpose is to show each individual item without creating clutter.
I chose to use this style for my consumerism project to make it a little more ‘relatable’ to modern day mainstream photographs on social media. As the new trend is to take aerial shots of material objects, I wanted to replicate the style as a modern take on still life photography. My aim is to produce photographs that capture the attention with pleasing aesthetics, but also send a message about the negative impact of the modern consumerist culture.
Upon research for theories and inspiration, my idea has progressed over the past three weeks to a more solidly standing one.
My project aims to bring the social issue of materialism and consumerism to light with the use of props, as well as an anonymous subject interacting with the props. The series is situated within academic discussion around the philosophical meaning of “materialism”, as well as the sociological and psychological impact of material possessions on the development of character and personality.
Researching Vanitas art and still life photography led to the realisation that photographs of similar style are often too vague to get the message across loud and clear to the audience. As this topic is universal, I thought it would be a better idea to have the photographs easily interpretable by the audience rather than make them require contemplating.
The different categories of objects that will be portrayed in the photographs (so far) are:
Food
Jewellery
clothes
money
alcohol
technology (phones, laptops, tablets, etc…)
As I plan on creating a total of 14 photographs, some of these categories will be portrayed twice each. the photographs will have a narrative theme to them, as I found that the message behind the photographs would be more conclusive if they had a sense of continuity to them.
Inspirations so far include Josef Sudek and Harmen Steernwyck (material concept), and Cindy Sherman (narrative style), although I plan on enriching that list of inspirations throughout the week.
For this semester’s project, I was inspired by a recent trip to Dubai to portray the materialistic and over-indulgent behaviour that is in society through a series of photographs.
The main themes I would like to explore are:
Modernity and materialism
Consumerism
Transience of life
over-indulgence
In a time where the acquiring of material belongings is becoming increasingly prevalent and desired in an average home, I feel like highlighting the issues with this materialistic trend would have a big impact on a wide variety of audiences. My aim is to raise awareness towards the false values given to materialistic things in modern society. The artists I’ve studied so far who have approached similar topics are 17th century painter Harmen Steenwyck, who used still life Vanitas paintings as a metaphor to transience and vanity of life, and photographer Justine Reyes, who recreated the 17th century vanitas still life paintings in a series of photographs.
Lara ElSergany 