Brief.
Construct a series of images elaborating on a theme.
Write a 300 word introduction.
Describe the process.
The Process – Part 1
I began putting a few ideas together[1] beginning with an attempt at expressing an idea of enigmatic dislocation which would imply some kind of narrative. I took this picture.
The figure and its situation are enigmatic. The light coming from the various doorways was easy to control. I waited for the right time of day and used curtains to moderate the light. I tried other locations but felt I did not have sufficient control over the environment or the resources necessary to create a set. I put this idea on the back burner.
My next thought was to follow Cindy Sherman’s and Cheryl Dunye’s examples to make an Untitled Film Still. I had also enjoyed Marcel Broodthaer’s images of a head in a glass vessel. I made a number of images of my face with different expressions, looking in different directions and so on so that the head in the bottle would seem to have some connection with its surroundings. This is one of them. I used light from a window controlled with curtains.
This was the set up.
I was not satisfied with this image. There was insufficient context to suggest more than a very short narrative. I felt I needed more in order to tell a story. I also needed more control over the light. I would come back to this idea.
Next, as I was thinking about inspiration for this assignment, I hit upon the idea of taking inspiration literally. I would go to church and take a picture of a person praying. I would take the picture from behind with a flash giving the figure an over exposed rim light. I tried this out but the practical difficulties of controlling the ambient light and the short range of the wireless flash trigger left me very dissatisfied with the result.
I went back to the head in the bottle idea. I thought I would emulate Cindy Sherman’s picture of herself in the kitchen, Untitled Film Still #3[2], and start the series by cooking something up. The camera was on a tripod and triggered by the remote in my left hand with a 3 second delay. I used a slight flash to fill in and reduce the contrast between light and shadow. This was promising, I thought, but didn’t suggest the mystery of what was to follow.
I decided to make a story of the head in the bottle from a magical beginning to a mundane acceptance. I set up a dark scenario illuminated by a candle against a black background and made this series of three which I called ‘The Grimoire’, ‘The Spell’, and ‘Success’.
1. The Grimoire
I was happy with the invisible writing on the left hand page showing up well but not happy with the pale line dissecting the scene. 
2. The Spell
Again, there is a problem with the pale line. I tried painting it out in Photoshop but the line in the glass holding the candle was too complicated to replace.
3. Success
I was happy with this image.
I realised that every frame had to have the same colour palette and treatment in order to make the images look as if they all came from the same film. 
4.
5.
6.
The general plan looks good. Now I have to reshoot making small corrections to composition and background and perhaps replan the whole project.
Research/Influences
· Cheryl Dunye’s collaboration with Zoe Leonard to make the fictional ‘The Fae Richard’s Photo Archive’. “Since it wasn’t happening I invented it,” says Dunye.[3]
· Alexia Sinclair’s carefully constructed sets and controlled colour palette.[4]
· Paolo Ventura’s insertion of himself into his short stories.[5]
· The facial expressions in Lydia Panas’ ‘The Mark of Abel’[6] as in this example.
· The anxiety in Clare Strand’s ‘Gone Astray Portraits’[7]
· Marcel Broodthaer’s face in a bottle[8]
I wanted there to be an interaction between the face and its environment.
· Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills[9] I was particularly struck by the way she uses eyes to look out of the picture to suggest that there is much more going on outside the frame. These examples are typical.
· Gregory Crewdson’s haunting strangeness[10]
· Rodney Graham’s sense of humour[11]
· Stiffs, Skulls and Skeletons: Images of the Darker Side of Life. Paul Moakley,Olivier Laurent[12]
The Process – Part 2
I decided to reshoot the series to try to make the story more mysterious and more consistent at the same time.
I decided to make the images monochrome and to use a different book as the Grimoire. The text in the original image, which I chose for the invisible writing on the left hand page, is Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. The text, which can be read in image three, is inappropriate. I chose a Coptic Dictionary to stand in for the magic book. The only English words that can be made out (‘who separates’, ‘God’s sword’, ‘from heaven’, ‘star’, ‘sun’, ‘like snakes’, ‘shine forth, glow’) seem appropriate to the magical theme. The candle is the only light source and it controls the lighting.
Stills From A Lost Horror Film
4 The Grimoire
5 The Face Begins to Appear as the Spell Begins to Work
6 It’s Alive and Responding to Its Environment
The Process – Part 2
8 The Face Realises Its Predicament as a Previous Creation Looks On
Reflection and Evaluation
The open ended nature of this assignment made the task more difficult for me than it should have been but once I had a plan it became much easier.
I enjoyed surfing through the various artists listed on page 7. One passage from Roland Barthes’ The Third Meaning[13] stuck in my mind and shaped my decision to make the Face in a Bottle series. He says,
“… the obtuse meaning appears to extend outside culture, knowledge, information; analytically, it has something derisory about it: opening out into the infinity of language, it can come through as limited in the eyes of analytic reason; it belongs to the family of pun, buffoonery, useless expenditure. Indifferent to moral or aesthetic categories (the trivial, the futile, the false, the pastiche), it is on the side of carnival.”
The idea of carnival and triviality guided me away from my original ideas of the enigmatic figure placed oddly at the end of a long corridor and away from trying to take a carefully (but failed) posed person at prayer. I thought it would be easier to make this series of faces in a bottle. In the end it was much harder to control the lighting and the settings. I made more than 120 images in order to make these few for the assignment.
Is the series successful?
I tested a couple of the images on Facebook to see what response they would get. People were positive and enjoyed the macabre fun. My aim of being on “the side of carnival” was achieved.
I made a mess of the last picture in the series in that it is not in the same format as the others. Unfortunately a computer glitch means that I can’t get back to the original to fix that.
[1] https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/51505801/posts/1427040581
[2] https://imageobjecttext.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/cindy-sherman-untitled-film-still-3.jpg
[3] http://www.archivesandcreativepractice.com/zoe-leonard-cheryl-dunye/
[4] https://alexiasinclair.com/
[5] http://paoloventura.com/?p=298
[6] http://www.lydiapanas.com/themarkofabel/
[7] http://www.clarestrand.co.uk/works/?id=100
[8] https://staging.artsy.net/show/museum-of-modern-art-marcel-broodthaers-a-retrospective
[9] http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sherman-untitled-film-still-48-p11518
[10] http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/gregory-crewson/
[11] http://www.balticmill.com/whats-on/exhibitions/rodney-graham
[12] http://time.com/3812666/halloween-skull-skeleton-death-burns-archive/
[13] Barthes, R, (1977) Image – Music – Text. London: Fontana Press
The game is to act out the mood that goes with the expression or, if several dice are thrown, to create a story to explain the connection between the various expressions.
Chris Whittle 
