Sam Reinders E-Portfolio

Initial Ideas

The theme of this project is 'exploration and discovery'. I would like to make my project about visitors and how people behave when they enter a foreign place. I am going to do this using the metaphor of an alien species to represent the tourists coming to Britain on their holidays.

Researched artists

Eugene Meatyard

Because of the involvement of masks and headpieces in my work to change a persons appearance Ralph Eugene Meatyard a relevant artist to research; an American photographer whose works often featured masks worn by people or objects. When he died in 1972 he was considered an outsider for the element of nostalgia he imbued in his work, at a time when photography was characterised by ambition and a search for America.


'Children-doll and masks collection' - Form, Process, Content
Form: The example I'm using is a black & white picture with four children sitting on the steps of what looks like an auditorium. The children are all wearing grotesque masks.
Process: Meatyard got his own children as well as the children of his friends to pose for him wearing masks that he purchased from a local shop.
Content: Hiding away the children's real faces and being encouraged to look at them in a stranger light draws attention to how strange they were to begin with. Taking away a part of their identity makes these children into what they always were; not fully formed people, whose identities and futures cannot be totally determined one way or the other.

Duane Hanson

Duane Hanson makes startling, lifelike sculptures of middle America using a casting from live models, recreating in bronze or fibreglass resin. He has done this since the early 1970s but the works most pertinant to myself are 'Tourists' (1970) and Tourists II (1988) both made from fibreglass resin and accosories. When they are photographed they look completely lifelike; perfectly capturing the mundane way some American tourists look at the places they visit.

'Tourists' (1970) - Form, Process, Content
Form: This piece is made up of two very lifelike models. The male figure is in his late fifties/early sixies. He has blotchy, sunburn skin and a bald head with little facial hair and round specticles. He is wearing a green and yellow hawaiian shirt, light orange checked shorts, black sandals and is carrying a camera, large camera bag and small tripod around his neck. The woman is clearly his wife. She's a little bit taller and has bronzed better than her husband but is the same age as him. She wears her blond hair in a yellow headscarf and hides her eyes behind round sunglasses. She's wearing blue sleaveless top with matching necklace. She's also wearing unflatteringly tight red trousers and perly sandals. She's carrying a baf in one hand with a pink scarf draping out. The both look like they are observing something in the distance with only the slightest modicum of interest. The man has his hand to his head in an effort to block out the sun.
Process: Duane Hanson made these figures out of fibreglass resin and adorned them with accessories. The figures are based on models whom Hanson thought were the right body-type. Photographs are taken to make the figures look as realistic as possible.
Content: Taking tourists and putting them in the setting of a gallery draws attention to their behaviour out of the context of a foreign place. This makes the viewer reflect on the way that they act when they are tourists in another country; perhaps not looking at it as a real place where people live.

Yinka Shonibare

One of Yinka Shonibare's earlier pieces is 'Dysfunctional Family', a playful exploration of alienation and multiculturalism in today's society. Shonibare uses batik, a colourful patterned material most commonly associated with exotic "Africanness" despite being colonial in origin. The piece is made from a family of four, four-foot high stuffed figures representing an alien version of the atomic family idea (father, mother, boy, girl). Here the artist is using the confused associations attributed to the batik fabric to reveal the idea of "a cultural identity" as a construct. At the same time he uses the creatures to show us what we consider foreign or "alien" in our own society.

Set 1 - Tourists

Aim: I wanted to take pictures of how people, and particularly tourists, behave in Camden market.

Process: I went to Camden Market and photographed people who looked like they didn't usually come to the market. I took special attention of people who I heard talking in a foreign language or accent. 

Critique: I think I got some pictures to people's behaviour but I was less successful at capturing the environment around them. Also, because I was zooming in a lot of the time the quality of some of the pictures isn't great. However I took away from it the one key detail for almost all visitors there. They came in pairs and usually couples - a man and woman.

Further Development: From here I want to take the setting (Camden Market) and some of the tourist tropes (couples, pointing, food, ect) and apply them to a alien tourist species.


Set 2 - Reflections, negative space, visual noise ect.

Aim: This set was to photograph people, patterns, negative space, light & shadow, repetition, reflection, perspective and visual noise.

Process: I went with the department on a trip to the barbican and also to Camden Lock. I frequently made use of the clear blue sky and modernist architecture at the Barbican as well as the behaviour of my peers and teacher. 

Critique: Despite the wide range of subject themes I think I have one or more photographs for every one and to good quality.

Further Development: This was a one-off expedition for this project but I was so great to go back to familiar photographic ground I had covered as early as GCSE photography and noticing how far my style and eye had developed in that time.

Set 3 - Alien in the Studio

Aim: With this set I wanted to portray the grace and beauty of the female alien but include a few that show her weirdness.

Process: I made a blue latex headpiece and attached it to my model Liv Thurley. I then applied shades of blue cream makeup to her face and neck. She applied eye liner, mascara and red lipstick. I photographed her in the studio with an even lighting. I told her to strike several model poses and also to make particular funny faces. 

Critique: The model is perfect for the graceful quirkiness I'm trying to convey. Keeping the lighting and exposure the same in every picture actually makes this a much better set. You really get a sense from these who the character is and who her species are. 

Further Development: I want these to be rich tourist aliens so I need to make a young couple from the same race, now named 'The Blukas'


Set 4 - Aliens in the Market

Aim: I wanted to take tourist pictures from a young Bluka couple's holiday on Earth, specifically Camden Market. I wanted them to be aware of the camera and frequently make gestures to it and even get people to be in their photographs. From a story point of view I'll say that the Blukas have brought along a handy camera-robot to take their pictures for them.

Process: I make up my models with the prosthetic applicatios and we took the bus to Camden market. We found that lots of people wanted to have their picture taken with the aliens so I would take their cameras and take their pictures with it and also with my own camera, sometimes at the same time. Also we went around the street and market and we impovised little scenes for camera based on how we thought the aliens would react to what they saw around them.

Critique: I think we got some fantastic shots. The markets were a great location to send up the usual behaviour of regular tourists.

Further Development: While there I had the idea of taking pictures of people taking pictures of them.

Set 5 - Alien Portraits

Aim: This set was simply to take a more in-depth look at the Bluka couple's characters.

Process: On the Market trip and also in Muswell Hill I took pictures that I felt showed the Bluka's separate and combined characters.

Critique: While I got a lot of good characterful pictures I'm not sure all of them agree with the preconsieved notion of the characters. For example some of them look like the Blukas are sad or pondering with goes against their usual emotion range of extatic, interested, confused, ect.

Further Development: On the next set I must make sure the character's emotions remain consistent to their backstory.

Set 6 - Alien Attraction

Aim: This set occured to me when we were already at the market. So many people were taking pictures of the Blukas that I often had time to go behind them and take a picture of them taking a picture of their friends with the aliens.

Process: Everytime people asked the aliens for a photo, my deal with them was that that was fine as long as I could take a picture from behind them.

Critique: because people were taking their pictures very quickly using manual I was forced to do the same so-as not to hold people up. As a result some of the photographs are less well exposed for instance. Nevertheless I still feel it was a well executed set. 

Set 7 - Aliens being noticed

Aim: This is a short set with a focus on people's rwactions to the aliens.

Process: I often went behind the Blukas as they walked and kept an eye on people's reactions as they walked past, taking pictures of them.

Critique: As the pictures were taken quickly of moving targets they are mostly bad quality even if I did get a few good and even socially interesting ones.

Set 8 - The Epcylons: Aliens in Poverty

Aim: With this set I wanted to tell the story of an alien whom society didn't want. If the Blukas are the space equivalent of American, Japanese or even British tourists then The Epcylons are the illegal immigrants. This particular Epcylon's baby child has been taken and the set includes two pictures of him at it's beginning. From there I want to show A day in the life of the immigrant, living like a down and out in the corners of Alexandra Palace. Finally she will attempt to phone home like a good ET and get caught by immigration control. The whole set must have that "watched" feeling.

Process: I made a larger headpiece that the Blukas ones. This one was made to look defensive but withdrawn. The face is slightly sunken under a large brow. I also picked a model of mixed turkish decent to hint at the outsider-in-Britain angel. I had a list of locations that I had scouted and photographed her going therough the life of a homeless person then hiding behind the scenery. Finally I photographed her in a telephone box and lastly took flash pictures of my hand opening the telephone box door and surprising her, symbolising her capture by immigration officials.

Critique: I love the way that this set tells a story and I think It's made better by the inclusion of the model Epcylon child at the beginning. The Prosthetic makes the homeless alien look far less approachable than the beautiful Blukas and you can almost imagine yourself walking past her on a street and averting your eyes. But due to the setting and the model's performance you feel a very heartfelt sadness on her behalf. I have colour corrected these images and the heightened contrast makes the green really stand out. Overall this is my favourite set with some beautiful images.

Further Development: I want my final piece to be two very different sets of notice boards; on one set the playful "holiday snaps" magnetic noticeboard belonging to the Blukas and chronicling their time on Earth, on the other hand a human immigration office's board with pictures chronicling the tracking and capture of the Epcylon illegal immigrant. The contrast between the two should draw attention to the different ways our society treats visitors to this country, rich tourists with welcome and attraction vs poor asylum seekers with further persecution.