Make 11 photographs that represent the marvellous and the everyday.
Below is a mind map of possible ideas.
When I got this brief, I was very confused on what the marvellous and the everyday was. I thought it was about something that I found marvellous. However, after presenting my photographs, I realised that it is in a surrealist sense of marvellous and the everyday.
Below are my final photographs.
Evaluation
I found this project very difficult as I thought I understood what the marvellous and the everyday was but turned out that when I presented these photographs, I had got the wrong idea to photograph things I found marvellous in the the everyday. I now know that the marvellous and the everyday is about surrealist things that happen in the mundane. An example of this would be features of a building that appear to look like something else like a face. This may only occur from different perspectives and angles and may happen in an instant so timing can sometimes be crucial.
Now after looking back on the photographs I think that only four of them have some sort of reference to marvellous and the everyday. These are the photographs below.
I think that the first photograph has reference to the marvellous and the everyday because it appears that the real world (the silhouette) is mirrored with the shadows on the floor. I think that the building in the second photograph resembles the shape of the clouds in a way. The curves of the building appear to imitate the curves and wisps of the clouds. The shadow cast onto the building in the third photograph makes it look like the sky, so it looks as if the building has the middle section missing. The final photograph is of two skyscrapers but it looks like you are looking downwards instead of upwards, so it alters the way you see it.
Overall I did, at the end, learn what marvellous and the everyday in the surrealist term means. I did find it very hard to look at things and try to find a way to make it shift slightly to give reference to the marvellous and the everyday. I think that this brief was the one I didn't enjoy the most just because it was so difficult to spot things that are unusual. I don't really like these photographs because there isn't much linking them together, they look very different and random, maybe this was because I was trying too hard to find something marvellous and the everyday.
If I was to do this again I would prefer to have much longer because it is difficult to find things that are marvellous and the everyday. Photographers, artists, writers etc like Andre Breton spend their entire careers on the marvellous and the everyday so I think if I had longer to train myself to look out for things that are marvellous and the everyday then I would achieve some better results.
Artist Research
Andre Breton
Andre Breton was a French writer and poet and is best known as the creator of surrealism. He was born in 1896 in Normandy, France and attended a medical school where he became fascinated with mental illness. He was drafted in for WWI where he worked on a neurological ward, he later married his first wife in 1929 and they moved into an apartment in Paris. This apartment was home to Breton's collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, books, photographs etc, a total go 5,300 items in total.
Below are a few photographs inspired or of Andre Breton.
Personally I do like this work but they are more surrealist photography than marvellous and the everyday. These works were inspired by Andre Breton's creation of surrealism and his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Breton was calling for "complete freedom of art" throughout his life.
Below are some examples of marvellous and the everyday by Lee Friedlander. I have researched Friedlander on my first project for his snapshots.
These photographs above are good examples of marvellous and the everyday because they show normal mundane things that seem to have shifted into something strange and slightly surreal. An example of this is the third image along which looks like a tree is growing out of a persons head but we obviously know that they are separate and it is just a persons shadow perfectly aligned with the shadow of the tree which creates this marvellous and the everyday image.