My Visual Logbook

Information from http://www.bjp-online.com/2015/04/nick-waplington-video-photography-alexander-mcqueen/ 

Heroin chic was a controversial fashion trend of the 1990's, influenced primarily by Nan Goldin and her real life, gritty portraits of outcasts. Images depicted very slim young girls and models with very angular faces and often dark circles under their eyes. Julian Broad, a portrait photographer, described heroin chic as photographs were not fully lit and the girl not smiling; a much broader description.

Many influential people of the 90's spoke out about the trend, including Bill Clinton, who highlighted that we 'do not need to glamorise addition to sell clothes'.
After the death of Davide Sorrenti in 1997, image-makers and magazines saw the implications their publications were representing, and begun to alter their style towards a brighter style of fashion imaging. However, the aesthetic still hung around, and even as recent as 2014 when Edie Campbell's campaign for Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium fragrance was investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority early this year after receiving 11 complaints over the claim that it glamourised drugs. 

I really liked the outcome of my disposable images which I took in Barcelona and was eager to shoot again on a disposable in a similar style.

For this shoot me and my friend on the Fashion Promotion and Communication course at NUA both needed similar style images; she is in the process of creating a magazine publication and asked me to model for her, and vice versa. We ventured to an abandoned building with another friend as our guide. Once narrowly avoiding some barbed wire we explored the different rooms to find suitable places to photograph. The building was last used as a dentist in 2004 and the once brightly coloured walls which were slightly faded looked really cool and quite homely, so I wanted to include them and the staircase also. I am still fascinated with Corinne Day's Dairy photographs, and they were always at the back of my mind for some inspiration when my ideas ran dry.

My final Outcomes:

Today I photographed AJ again, trying out another potential image for my D&AD brief.

My final Outcomes: 

For my final outcomes I tried three different crops of the same image in photoshop, to see if altering this would effect the mood of the image, and effect what I want the image to portray to a viewer. I am happy with the lighting of these images, it suits the skin tones of my model well and highlights what I wanted to highlight. In terms of post production, I lowered the saturation of the orange, his skin tone slightly and increased the highlights, lowered the blacks.

I don't like these images as much as the first set of photographs for this brief. The other images tell more of a story and fit the title I have chosen for them better.

Today I also shot a lighting test for another image for my D&AD series, this time based on a swimmer. I was influenced by Diego Lorenzo Jose, a Manila-based photographer I discovered on Bēhance, an online media platform for creative practitioners. He had a series of athletic portraits which were similar in style to ones I had perviously shot, and this particular one stood out to me as something I wanted to shoot. At first I had wanted to shoot on location, however to tie my three images together better I have decided to shoot all three in the studio, which works really well. 

Trainspotting is a British Black comedy crime drama directed by Danny boyle, which follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980's economically depressed area of Edinburgh. The film explores urban poverty and received some bad press for its glamorisation of drug abuse.
I really like the aesthetic of the film and its similar to that which I want to achieve in my narrative. The grain and colours are key features which I wish to recreate.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/26195/1/when-corinne-day-shot-for-penthouse

I have already decided that I want my narrative to be about me and centred around my friends and whats personal to me.  I looked into Mario Sorrenti and his book and exhibition entitled 'Draw Blood for Proof' which was a collection of personal inspiration images which he had collected in the 90's and pasted onto a wall in his loft. It shows an inside view into his thought processes and where he draws inspiration from, which I found really interesting. I also like the layout of this work as it looks like a personal scrapbook, which is a method of presentation which I am considering for my book.
I like the idea of my final book being not only a publication of my work but something which I can look back on as personal memories in the future.



http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/16631/1/mario-sorrentis-draw-blood-for-proof

Human traffic is a film which has a similar aesthetic to that which I want to create with my narrative; the dirty, raw, natural imagery with lots of grain and contrast. The film is a British/Irish independent film which explores drugs and clubs, and relationships. I was first introduced to the film during my A- Level psychology lessons as we explored the portrayal of drug culture through films. This film, along with another similar film from the same time, Trainspotting, which is referenced to in this film, both received backlash for glamourising the 'drug lifestyle' and encouraging the 'Heroin Chic' aesthetic.