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Wednesday 17 February 2021

Project Progress: The End Times

 As can be seen from my previous posts I have been working on the concept of end times for photographs and paintings.  So far I have completed research on expressionism, the end times and I have begun on more specific research for the pictures I have planned such as the maniacal laughter and the 'lustmord' idea from Otto Dix. These test shots have shown that I still need more work on the maniacal laughter and I was reminded of the image by Jeff Wall 'Dead Troops Talk' (1992) 




The depicted scene is clearly fiction: it shows us dead soldiers who seem to talk and joke with one another. This was a staged image that was created in a studio with the soldiers being photographed separately and then put together through digital montage. For that reason, Susan Sontag referred to this image as the' opposite of a document'  in 2012, his work Dead Troops Talk fetched $3,666,500 at Christie’s, New York, making it the third most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.

This black humour is what I wanted to capture in the images, it is almost hysterical, on the brink of death laughter that I want to show.  This has been quite a challenge to achieve in photos and in drawing - so I will keep working on this.

For the other images I am still deciding on the content but I may use food as the one thing we now do is eat at home always so something surrounding these solitary meals.  Also, something to do with sleep as now we live in a state of anxiety sleep is most definitely disturbing. 

I may consider the whole project as about disturbance and this is what I might call the end collection. 

References

Sontag S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin Books Ltd. London

CBS News (08/05/2012) Jeff Wall Photograph sells for a record 3.6 million [Online] Available from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/jeff-wall-photograph-sells-for-record-3-6m-us-1.1205822#
(Accessed 17/02/21)


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