First draft Proposal

At the moment I'm working on getting back into a conceptual mindset after a long break, and revisiting my final exhibited work last year. I was overall very pleased with what I created, and while I believe the result was a resolved piece of artwork, I find myself wanting to explore the collision between photography and cinema in more in depth. In retrospective critique of my work last year, I think that the final concept wasn’t realized until near the end, and I didn’t necessarily have time to explore the different levels of subtlety. The Plot Thickens (http://emilyhlavac.blogspot.com/2008/11/plot-thickens-final-images.html) was an effective comment on the cinematic cliché in an obvious, almost comical way. While I am still thoroughly interested in the constructing of scenes and staging of action, perhaps I will see if I can create something more representative of the subtleties of cinema.

At the moment conceptually I am focusing on finding out more about the relationship between cinema and photography, and how one another influence each other.
Technically I am exploring the use of film, manipulating the camera and the image within the viewfinder (what we see, what we know). The idea of panoramic imagery also fascinates me, we are seeing more than the span of our peripheral vision in one go, which automatically disrupts the idea that a photograph is a single moment in time caught on camera.

So a few ideas that pop up..

-Symbology and iconography in cinema
-Moving image can be STILL, while a still image can suggest motion.
-Film stills as fragments of a whole?

-structural film, the film itself

-TIME/DURATION.. Non linearity

A couple of favourite photographers at the moment...

SAM TAYLOR-WOOD: FIVE REVOLUTIONARY SECONDS X, 1997, 106,7x 500 cm

Sam Taylor-Wood

I am drawn to the panoramic style of her five revolutionary seconds firstly, but I also think that Taylor-Wood has managed to get across a sense of subtlety without dulling down the action.

Gregory Crewdson

Narrative photographer. His books Twilight and Beneath The Roses vary quite widely in content, but all have this crazy surreal aspect. The lighting, combined with the strange positioning of figures and random props gives an eerie feeling.