Artist Gallery
Artist Analysis
Abigail McGuane is a photographer and artist working in Toronto who was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1986. In 2011, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in sculpture from Ontario College of Art and Design in 2011. A lot of her work focuses on the “relationship between image and support”, meaning she focuses not only on subjects but also how she presents them (in terms of frames and sculpture). An example of this can be seen in her work “A game of choice”. In this work she presents a series of similar glass panes in different sculpted frames, making the actual purpose of the work to exhibit the frames, not the plain glass which they are holding. However, the work of McGuane that I have decided to focus on is one of her earliest. In 2009, she started a series called “Unseeing”, in which she layered photographs to distort the images of people they contained. This links closely to the section of the Identity project that I have chosen to focus on: hidden identity. The identity of each of her subjects are concealed by the distortion, so this links to my idea of wanting to explore how much of one’s identity remains when the appearance is changed.
In terms of the techniques used in McGuane’s work, it is difficult to tell. Her work was likely edited into black and white (seeing as the photographs were taken in 2009). This means that the layers blend between shades of grey. Another technique I noticed was that in some of her photographs (such as the one displayed here), the top layer wasn’t too distorted. This allowed me to see that the subject that she photographed was sitting in the centre of the frame of the camera, with the head falling in the central third (according to the rule of thirds). The layers are also quite grainy, so it appears that a high ISO was used, however, this could also be due to the printer she used, which left noticeable lines down the front of the model. However, the photographs aren’t blurry or unfocused, so she likely used a high number of f-stops (somewhere around f/8-11). Something else I noticed was the high-key lighting used. The background of the model is bright white (so much so that I believe it is over-exposed), which provides a sharp contrast between the model and the background. At the bottom of the image the background darkens, lessening this contrast, so much so that eventually the line between model and background is quite difficult to notice.
The materials McGuane used to make this work is paper. She printed out her photographs and layered them, cutting out pieces each time to layer up the gaps in a way that shows them growing larger. The effect of this is an image that is confusing in its initial appearance, seeing as the person whom it depicts has become heavily entangled. McGuane layered up many different images so that where an image has been cut away a new one shows through. This adds to the overall disorientating feel her work gives off. The person has become distorted that in some pieces it is not immediately obvious it is a person until an eye or nose (or of course some other feature) is noticed.
My initial reaction to this piece was amazement. I imagined that each one would have taken an incredibly long time, what with each having to be cut out and measured separately, and then prepped for photographing. Her work reminded me of someone taking a smudge tool to a person’s face in photoshop, however, she managed to create that effect physically by making cuts to an
image. It was a truly impressive feat, especially when it is taken into account that this piece was made whilst she was still studying at college before she got her BFA. I instantly thought that this artist would be the perfect fit for the idea I’d had for the identity project.
In my opinion, I think this work is spectacular. The way she was able to almost layer each photograph perfectly with a bit missing each time to create these distorted images is inspiring. I am inspired by these images to think about ways I can physically manipulate my own photographs. It’s made me realise that there are many more ways to present them than just a framed image. When I come to create my final piece for identity, I would like to keep this realisation in mind so that I can present my work in an interesting and original way. Her work surely seems to do that to me and is one of the reasons I think it’s an amazing piece of work.
Photoshoot Plan
This is my photoshoot plan for the Abigail McGuane project. I kept the colour scheme black and white to match her work's colours. In the plan, I included the camera settings and angles that would go into the photoshoot (straight on and grainy). In this photoshoot, I would like to take different photos from different angles of the same person and then layer them after turning them black and white. I will take the photographs against a white background to keep the lighting high-key. In addition, I will also make sure that the model wears black, seeing as the people in McGaune's work always appear to be wearing black too. I included an example of McGuane's work, however, I am going to do my first developments digitally. This is because it allows me to practice layering the photos before I spend a lot of time trying to layer them and cut them out physically.
Contact Sheets
These are my contact sheets for the first photoshoot. I took a lot of photographs for this shoot so that I'd have a lot of material to work with when I eventually come to layering them. At the beginning of the photoshoot I hadn't made the background completely white, so after nine photographs I tied a sheet the the wall to make a plain background. From these photos I have selected the more successful ones and circled them to mark these. The white background (sheet) was quite wrinkled, however, I do not think this would be an issue seeing as once I layer the images the fine details won't be too obvious. In some of the images I decided to also include hand movements, so I'm going to have distorted hands as well as just profiles in my work. I think this will add to the overall distortion of form that is very prevalent in McGuane's work.
Initial Black & White Edits
These are my initial edits for the identity photoshoot inspired by Abigail McGuane. For these edits I was focusing on editing them into black and white, to prepare them for my second edits. The first thing I did to all of them was crop out any of the background that wasn't covered by the white sheet. I held the white sheet up by weighting it down with weights on two cupboards, which gave it some texture as it sags in the centre. This will add texture to the backgrounds of the photographs. After that, I lowered the saturation level and increased the contrast. Then, I increased the grain, making the photographs appear older.
Highlighting Success
These are my most successful images from this shoot. It was difficult to choose the most successful out of all of these, seeing as they are all in black and white. The way in which I decided which were the most successful was by the poses. I chose these photographs because they provide a good variety of poses. Some of the photographs have hands in them, whilst others are just profiles from different angles (e.g. side and three-quarter profiles). The hands mean that there will be texture not only over the model's body but also partially over the background. This is good as it means the photographs will be more interesting instead of plain white backgrounds layered on top of each other.
Developments: Digital
Here are my first digitally layered edits. To create them I first edited all my photographs into black and white, and then layered them. After that, I went to the second layer and erased a couple of circles in random areas. Then, on the third layer, I lowered the opacity in order to see where I erased the circles. Once I was able to see them, I then enlarged the eraser and created new holes (on the third layer), that lined up with the ones on the second layer. The effect of this was that there now was a hole through wich you could see both the second layer and the first layer (seeing as the third layer's holes were larger than those of the second)
Highlighting Success:
These are my most successful edits from the first developments. They are the most successful due to a number of reasons, but a thing they all have in common is eyes being at the centre of the erased circles. I noticed in the artist's work that she kept some features visible, so I decided to include that in my work too. As a result of this, within the centre of most of my circles, eyes, teeth, ears, hands, and noses can be seen. This made these images most successful to me for that reason. For the centre image, the one of a profile head, this one was particularly successful due to the way the edits fall over the skin. It doesn't change how I edited it, but I think the edits look best when they're not floating.
Second Photoshoot
Half way through my second developments I decided I needed to do a second photoshoot. This was because I thought too many of my first photographs were too similar. To rectify this I took photographs of a different person. I then combined both the person from the original photoshoot and this person together to make the edits even more distorted. Again, I have circled the successful images, and crossed out the ones that I'm less pleased with. However, it does not matter much if I use them seeing as they will be layered and so not entirely visible. With this photoshoot I used the same camera settings as before, as well as the same background (a white sheet draped over a wall as I needed a high-key background).
Liquified Edits:
For these edits I used my initial edits. I edited them using the liquification tool. This allowed me to warp the layers I created through erasing circles. The effect of this was that my images look more like the original work of Abigail McGuane, seeing as her work wasn't made of perfect circles but more irregular shapes. These edits will serve as inspiration when I come to do my physical edits for my final piece. The only issue with the liquification tool was that it warped not only the layers but the image of the person around them as well as the background. This led to the formation of bent shadows in the background sheet and irregular shapes in the model.
Highlighting Success
These are my most successful liquified edits. I like them the most as I think the top photographs on each really suit the edits. In the first one, I like how the arms frame the warped circles. Similarly, the second one of a profile head, is successful to me as the positioning of the head and the edits work well together.
Experiments
These are my contact sheets for my experimental photographs. I wanted to try using water and bubbles to distort the images as the circular edits reminded me of ripples and so gave me the idea. At first, I placed my images under a transparent dish with water in it and created ripples. After that, I submerged the actual photographs and put soap in the water to create bubbles. I took photographs of both of these settings. I also tried crumpling the paper and ripping it, which can be seen in the final few images in the first contact sheet.
Edits
These are the experimental water edits I did. In terms of editing them, all I did was crop the edges and make sure they were black and white. I also increased the contrast to make sure the dark areas were truly dark, and the light areas were the same. I did three different things using the water; first I asked one of my friends to create ripples in the water by blowing on the surface (I have included a picture of this bellow). After that, I added bubbles to the liquid. The final thing I did was submerge the actual pictures in the water to distort them by destroying them.
This is a photograph of my friend blowing into the dish (after we added the bubbly mixture). He did this to make ripples in the water. I took pictures of the water whilst he did this. It was a very effective method, but I did have to crop out his head in some of the pictures.
Highlighting Success
These are my most successful water edits. I tried to include both the rippled and the bubbled edits in this. For the rippled edits, a lot of them were a little bit blurry, so I chose the ones that were less so. Aside from that, I was able to choose edits that were actually more interesting. The first image I regard as successful because I like the way the bubbles frame the eye. For the second one, a similar thing happened except this time a single bubble was around the eye. I really liked how this looked as it reminded me of a window. The final bubble image (number four), is probably the most successful of these. I scrunched up the paper and put bubbles over it. This made it look really distorted and so therefore, was successful to me.
GIF
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I made a GIF of the most successful image. To make this I first coloured the whole image, and then erased the areas which I didn't want to be coloured. After that, I save the picture. Then, I saved it again but adjusted the colour by 10. I did this thirty-seven times until I had cycled through the colour wheel. Then, I added all the saved images to a website to compile them and saved them as a GIF. The result is an edit where the bubbles are colour changing.
Cut-Out Edits
These are the developments I made physically, and the ones that are the most similar to McGuane's actual work. To make them, I layered around seven sheets of paper on which I had printed out unedited photographs of my friends. Then, I started by cutting a hole on the top sheet with a scalpel, and then, once I'd exposed the layer below, cutting a hole slightly smaller to create layers. I did this until I reached the last layer. Sometimes I would make irregular shapes within the layers so each would be slightly different from the layer above. Here I have attached a zoomed-in and zoomed-out version of all five developments (it's five because each took around 45 minutes to complete). I tried to leave prominent features such as eyes, hands, and teeth clear to make them stand out amongst the chaos of the edits. Below I have included what the setup looked like, as well as black and white edits.
This is what the pages look like unedited and stacked together. as you can see, they are layered together to create depth and to allow me to cut different parts of them away.
Black and White Edits
These are the final cut out edits for Abigail McGuane. Overall, I am really pleased with how they turned out. The only thing I wish I could change about them was that sometimes when I was cutting the paper, tiny bits around the edges wouldn't cut cleanly so you can sometimes see bits of white paper or places where I've accidentally cut the edge of a layer. Despite this, I really like how they turned out. A common theme I used was using the hands to frame the layers, as I thought this made them look better supported in the image. The last one doesn't have this feature, but that's because I was trying to go for a more jagged look with that one, seeing as McGuane also used that sometimes. However, I don't like how that one turned out too much, as I think it made it lose some of the organic-ness that the curved layers provided.
Highlighting Success
These are my most successful edits of the bunch. This is because I think that they are the ones that had both the best composition and the best difference between darkness and light. In the first image, there is a contrast between the light negative space surrounding the layers and the people obscured in the edit. This is slightly the opposite in image two, seeing as the dark arms of the model on the top layer stand out a lot against the grey mid-tones of the layers. Finally, the last image is successful because of how many cut-outs I was able to do. In this edit, I tried to fit as much into it as possible, and I really like how it turned out, especially around the hands.
Depth Photographs
These are some photographs I took of the cutout edits to explore depth. I wanted to capture the different layers of the paper so I took photographs at an angle. This allowed the different layers of paper to stand out more, and added to the distortion of the images. I think this is a more interesting way to look at the edits too as it makes them more nonsensical and as a result makes you want to look at them to figure them out.
Highlighting Success
Here are the most successful depth photographs. They are the photos in which the different layers are easiest to see and the ones in which the depth is most pronounced. I think the edit that worked best with the depth photograph was the angular one, seeing as the corners really made the paper look like stairs.
