Rodchenko and Maholy-Nagy's photography related to my own because of their technique in the way they looked at the world differently, using extreme view points and framing. Below I have looked in to photographers whose subjects are similar to those that I used in assignment two. Before starting this assignment, I didn't know where to even begin with research. The suggestions from my tutor during my feedback have been beneficial and will allow me to contextualise my work in the future.

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Melanie Friend

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Melanie Friend started her career as a photojournalist in the 1980's and by the 90's she had started to produce work for galleries that focused on conflict and war. Her series of work 'The Home Front' explores links between militarism, marketing and entertainment, specifically looking into the general publics experience of war and how it has been normalised in our country with air shows and military bases so close to beaches and places of family days out.

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Peter Kennard

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Peter Kennard is a London born photomontage artist. He started his career as a painter but became heavily involved in the anti Vietnam movement and found that he could showcase his political views with the use of photomontage. Kennard wanted to encourage people to think about what was going on in the world around them and found that image manipulation helped him to get that message across, using images in his montages from press and television news.

 

The image above of Tony Blair taking a selfie on a mobile phone came about during the Iraqi war, when Blair had sent British troops to fight in the war. Many people believed the image was real and were shell shocked that he could proudly take a photo like it but of course people knew it was a representation of the devastation that had been caused because of decisions made by the then British Prime Minister.

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Kennard also produced many posters using his photomontage techniques for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was never paid for these works and was never officially a member of the group but this again was something he believed in.

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Kennard's photomontages have clearly made a huge impact in the media over the years. They display an altered reality that could scarily be or become real. His images allow us to open our eyes wide enough to see things that generally as a humans we don't normally like to think about. From what I've seem of his images, they are c creative and each fit a brief of what he wanted to successfully achieve.

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Both Melanie Friend and Peter Kennard's work can be linked loosely to my assignment because of what the images contain. They each feature aspects of war. My assignment features artillery from the war that has been put on show. Melanie Friend's work features aspects of war and nostalgia but with hidden meanings and Peter Kennard's use of image manipulation also holds a different meaning but he has done this in a way that is more in your face and less subtle then Melanie Friend's photography. I have found it helpful to look at both photographers and how we can use photography to portray a deeper meaning.

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My tutor asked me to think about what my assignment photos might mean. We talked about the possibility that they could be used in a brochure for tourists but I think that they don't really look like your generic brochure photo. They could be used in an article, if one was to ever be written about the fort in Gravesend. Maybe a celebration to mark an anniversary. I would most like to see them on display, maybe on a big information board or even an interactive one about the fort that states the history of the area and tells you why the guns are there. 

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But what do they mean?

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I named the series 'History and Harmony', this was because the morning I went and shot the series it was early, no one was around and the area felt calm. Two different time periods were sitting together in harmony. The world around the artillery guns is ever changing, with the seasons and times but the guns that sit there have not changed for a hundred years, give or take a new coat of paint. They sit parallel together in history and harmony. 

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The meaning behind these images to me is that they are a nod to all those that fought in the war and are a reminder to all that we lost but also to what we gained and there is a deep respect in every frame that carries the series.

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