Photography

The first stage of the photography unit covered the basic operation of Pentax SLR cameras, using a preset exposure level, manual focus control as well as a general introduction to approaching photographing a chosen subject.

I have always had an interest in photography, derived from my interest in cinema and cinematography, and I have enjoyed taking photographs using digital cameras in the past. My experience with traditional SLR cameras up until this point has been limited however so I am very keen to get more experience on their use, and using them to support my work now and in the future. Analogue photography is a more involved physical process, which in itself is fascinating to me, and allows for more 'incidental' effects to be discovered.

During the session today we shared a camera and a roll of 36 shots of black and white film, between groups of two or three. We went out around the college site to photograph anything of interest that came up, and I enjoyed not only taking my own photos, but discussing subjects, framing, light and visual patterns with my fellow students. The only downside that I found was that I could have continued taking a lot more than 12 photos (per person) and I continued to see points of interest beyond my allotted amount. The rolls of film we have been using will be developed between now and the next session a week from now, when we will develop photographs from the negatives using photopaper in the photography studio. I had some experience of this process (as well as developing rolls of film) previously at the college, when I was studying an AVCE Media Studies course in 2001, however my memory of the process is very vague by this point in time and I am eager to re-learn what I previously studied.

In terms of photography that I enjoy, I am always curious about experimental photography techniques, such as using long exposures and unconventional framing of images. I have found recently that using black and white photography (primarily with my own DSLR Sony A390 camera) results in starkly different results to colour photography, and these images contain a lot of 'drama' without a great deal of effort being required. Over the last year since buying this camera I have practised in both colour photography and black and white, and I am now leaning more towards black and white photography almost entirely, however I am wary of shutting off any options. There is a realm of experience in colour imagery that is entirely complex but in different ways, whilst there is a pure simplicity of monochromatic imagery that is both revealing in it's contrast but also distinctly mysterious. This is the power of film noir, of art-house cinema such as Eraserhead or Tetsuo: The Iron Man, films where the expected becomes twisted and distorted, in no short amount because of the removal of colour from the equation. Light and shadow become polarised, directly opposing each other instead of supporting one another, and so the roles that light and shadow play in the visual narrative change and become altogether more significant, whereas tradtionally (at least in contemporary work), colour leads our eyes and minds in many ways all at once. They are not so much different phrases of the same visual language, but almost different languages entirely.

David Lynch's ERASERHEAD combines bizarre imagery, abstractions of the subconscious and in this scene, motifs that would re-emerge in his work time and again (curtains, stages and performance are all themes that return in works including BLUE VELVET, TWIN PEAKS and MULHOLLAND DRIVE). The use of black and white patterns in the floor, working against the pitch black of blood when all colour is removed, creates a deeply engaging and disturbing image.

Shinya Tsukamoto's TETSUO: THE IRON MAN uses nightmarish imagery of physical transformation, anarchic in it's patterns an at times the monochromatic nature of the film make the images all the more baffling to unravel. It becomes difficult at times to tell where the man ends and begins amongst the metal debris, rust and chaos of the environment.

Shinya Tsukamoto

The following images are taken from promotional material for the film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009), the third film in the series by Shinya Tsukamoto, who is a personal favourite of mine from since I was a child. I first saw Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1991) in the mid-nineties, when I would have been around ten years old, after my older brother had taped it from television. The plot follows a man who is pursued by mysterious thugs subscribing to a kind of metal fetishism, who seek to draw out a violent transformational physical response from the man, in which weapons, namely guns or cannons, emerge from his body. Through their actions, the man accidentally kills his own young son in an uncontrollable fit of rage, aimed at the men who kidnap him. Throughout the film, he goes to and from a state of physical transformation, somewhat reminiscent perhaps of a cross of Cronenberg's  The Fly and Cameron's The Terminator, becoming entirely lethal and completely out of control. By the films conclusion, he is essentially a tank rolling through Tokyo with no intention in mind other than destruction.

The third film in the series is essentially a more modernised reworking of the story of the second film, with some more of the art-house influences present in the 1989 Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The visual effects are refined and the 'Tetsuo' design is more complex visually, and the film itself has a considerably higher fidelity than the grainy film used in the original two films. However, by transitioning to digital film, there is a quality in the original films that is lost, namely the dirty roughness reminiscent of rust, a theme very significant to the first two films. The Bullet Man is a more chaotic affair than Body Hammer but lacks of the black humour of The Iron Man, resulting in a film that is less certain of itself perhaps than it's predecessors.

Tsukamoto's work is often concerned with transformation or the transformational effect of emotions, often rage, on a person. Tokyo Fist (1995)  is similarly concerned with anger and violence, infused with a great deal of the black humour present in the first Tetsuo film. In A Snake of June (2002), the main themes are voyeurism and malaise, with the main character a woman in an interminable marriage that is completely sexually repressed, who inadvertently inspires a photographer to 'save her' the way she saved him through a sort of Samaritans hotline. He does this by blackmailing her into exploring her sexuality, threatening to send on photographs of her masturbating to her husband if she doesn't comply.

Tsukamoto stars in all of these films, and would typically be considered an auteur as he writes and directs most of his work, occasionally taking direction only projects. This would indicate that these roles that he plays (the antagonist in all three Tetsuo films, the photographer in A Snake of June and the anti-hero in Tokyo Fist) have great significance to him.

 

Man-machine physical transformation (American actor Eric Bossick) in Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

 Shinya Tsukamoto in Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Promotional artwork for Tetsuo II: Body Hammer

Promotional artwork for Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer trailer

A Snake of June trailer