GregRob: SoFoBoMo blog

Methods & Themes

I have already been trying to come up with a theme for my photobook for a few weeks now.  As we are starting to get closer to the start of SoFoBoMo it’s time to decide on something.  At the moment though I am struggling to come up with a real theme, and I keep getting distracted by methods instead.

What do I mean by methods?  I mean ways in which to make the photos for the book, photo geek ideas.  So for example shooting everything with my Bender 4×5 large format camera.  Or another one would be using only Fuji FP-100c instant film for the photos.  One method that keeps coming to mind is to finish building a digital scanning back from a Canon LiDE scanner, mount it on the back of my Cambo 8×10, and capture massive (100 megapixel?) Black & White images for the book.

Even when I stop obsessing over what equipment to use I begin to think of methods for constructing images.  For example one method that really appeals to me is the photo collage work of David Hockney.  In these constructions David takes many pictures containing the elements of the final image and puts them together in a collage that seems to show the world the way the brain sees it, with some elements of cubism, as well as seeming to communicate narrative with the resultant image.

Here is an example from David’s website, please click on the image to be taken to his site:

From the David Hockney page on Wikipedia:

David Hockney has also worked with photography, or, more precisely, photocollage. Using varying numbers (~5-150) of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work which has an affinity with Cubism, an affinity which was one of Hockney’s major aims – discussing the way human vision works. Some of these pieces are landscapes such as Pearblossom Highway #2, others being portraits, e.g. Kasmin 1982, and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.

These photomontage works appeared mostly between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as “joiners”. He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject would actually move while being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer’s perspective. In later works Hockney changed his technique and moved the camera around the subject instead.

Hockney’s creation of the “joiners” occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography.

I have tried this myself previously, here is an example of Declan’s energy:

But still this is not a theme for a book, this is a method of creating images.

Taking 100 megapixel images captured with a MacGyver’d camera isn’t a theme for a book either, it is just a method for capturing images.

While there aren’t any SoFoBoMo rules that say the book has to have a theme, in my vision of a photo book that I put my name on, there has to be a cohesive theme bringing the images together.  I need to clear my mind of methods and focus on themes.   In the end a method may contribute to a theme, but the theme must come first.

What is the next step in this journey?  It will likely be brainstorming.  For an artistic endeavour that will not tell me what my theme will be, but it will get the juices flowing, and once ideas for a theme have percolated for another week I hope my theme will become clear.