Level 4 Space and Place - Bethany Corbett

In my recent research, I have come across and mentioned a fair bit of folk art, and I feel that my work is becoming rather influenced by it in meaning, and I thought it would be appropriate to gather a strong understanding of the term, so I can further take influence to a deeper level. With my research I want to focus a lot on how others would describe it to understand the most underlying themes of folk art. The genres held within art often have characteristics that make and define them to belong to that genre, whether it be era, style or influence, however folk art is much more broad. Huffington post claims that "The dominant identifying factor of folk art is probably its distance from the academic mainstream. However, other (similarly murky) categories such as self-taught art and outsider art share such a classification too. The description of "not academic" certainly fails to describe and encompass the wide and wild range of folk art possibilities." My wor...

Takihiro Sato is a Japanese photographer born in 1857, who is well known for his experiments with light and nature. Originally trained as a sculptor,  Sato uses large format cameras with exposures of up to three hours at night, and uses mirrors and light pens to reflect light into the camera, creating these specks of light across the subject, often a tree trunk. In dark situations, he flashes a flashlight into the lens, and during the day he uses the mirror to reflect the sun's light into the lens. Because of his intervention, the photos are no longer a simple record of nature, but also have a sense of unseen life and presence; with the long exposure we cannot see the photographer, however we can certainly see that these interruptions aren't the doing of mother nature, and so we assume he altered the image in some way. At first, when I saw him images I presumes he was using very bright fairy lights around the trunk, and I think that because it' such an unconventional te...

Jem Southam is a photographer born in Bristol in 1950 who is greatly inspired by the works of William Eggleston. He began working with photography in the 70's, recording the trees in his home area. To this day, he still visits back repetitively, to record the changes in the trees and the natural world and often how humans are making the environment adapt in our presence. According to British Photography, Southam says "My overall artistic intentions are to make work that explores how our history, our memory, and our systems of knowledge combine to influence our responses to the places we inhabit, visit, create, and dream of.. I eschew grandeur for the sake of it preferring to revel in a subtler scale and history. But there's still an epic story to be told which exists wherever humans have made their homes." He started his project 'The Painter's Pool' in 2002. Southam became good friends with a painter, Mike Garton, who had spent twenty years painti...

Uldus Bakhtiozina is a Russian photographer who uses photography to share her vision of Russian folklore and fairytales. Her images are rather artistic and elegant in composure, however the stories behind them are often dark with hidden meanings. The artist herself says the project's aim  'Was to show through the prism of art photography, unsaid, rewritten or distorted over many centuries of history and stories, delving into the study of the origin of words in Russian fairy tales. Each tale contains numerous hidden messages and I aim to lift the audience back inside each myth, showing a glimpse of their secret meaning, with careful reading of the tale'. Uldus combines modern day technology and art techniques with traditional views and perceptions of Russian fairytales, which my work can relate to, apart from my subject is very real.  Russian fairytales often originated from horror stories, hence why the artist aspired to show the darker side of these now soften...

This shoot went far better than the first. I had forgiven myself for themistakes last time and just focused on doing my best while also having fun. I feel like the aim of this shoot wouldnt have been accomplished if it was too structured, as I wanted the images to feel very free. I used the Nikon d810, and a 28-70mm lens - meaning I could get those wide angle shots I wanted last time as it was an FX lens rather than DX. I remembered to change the format to RAW, meaning I was more free with editing and the images are of better quality. I had a large long torch that I used for the long exposures, the idea was to create a sense of life with an ethereal presence. I chose to shoot the images landscape because in the last shoot you couldn't really comprehend the width of the tree, which is rather wide and is better shown not taken in portrait. The first idea I had was to do the long exposures all around the tree at 30 seconds, then go into the tree and have the light swirling i...

This Folk Archive is a collection of folk art ranging from relics from festivals and celebrations across Britain to works from the present day. It's described as being at 'the seam between art and anthropology' The compilation of works are not likely to often be described as 'contemporary popular art from the UK' however this is exactly how the authors/organisers describe these works. Deller, in an interview said "the driving force for folk archive is the everyday creativity that we see all around us in the UK, there is a section on politics which inevitably touches on civil unrest and disobedience but that is only a part of a much larger show." in the start of the book, it's prefaced with "‘For those interested in an anthropological approach, we must apologise for the rather too knowing misuse of the phrase “archive” and an artistic casualness with details. For all involved in the folk or vernacular cultural scenes we must similarly apologi...

William Mortensen (January 27, 1897 – August 12, 1965) was a photographer who explored the themes of witchcraft and betwitchment within his images, depsite being more well known for his Hollywood portraits. However, well respected photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston did not approve of these themes, to the extent that they called him the 'Antichrist'. They did their best to remove him from books, museums and galleries. An author at Faena aleph said "William Mortensen, above all, possessed an esoteric sensibility that produces chills in the observer, and that nobody has had since then." His images are largely about darkness, black magic and occultism, but for the most part there's always the underlying magic in how it involves the viewer; compelling us to look. In his book  The Command to Look, Mortensen discusses 'visual bewitching' that he experimented with in his images. The book is now cult object and influenced the 'bible' of t...