Poe, Hitchcock, and a conceptual photographer walk into a bar…
Just as I struggled with choosing a topic and narrowing it down in the fall, I can’t seem to restrain myself when brainstorming my digital thesis project. The possibilities are limitless! My project wish list goes on and on, but I tried to restrain myself to proposing projects that can be realistically completed within the time frame of the course.
Last semester, I proposed a self-portrait photo series inspired by the works of Cindy Sherman, whose photos I was luckily able to see in person tonight at an art auction. By losing herself in the portraits, Sherman is able to fully take on the identities of other artists, personalities (like the Final Girl in horror films), etc. Choosing subject matter would not be very difficult: both Poe and Hitchcock play with varying degrees of female obsession that I would represent by playing with the objects of their fixations. In the style of Cindy Sherman, I would try my best to recreate the iconic Hitchcockian beauties (maybe including my own rendition of a toothless Berenice and ghastly Ligeia) in a portrait series that would be available online as a digital portfolio. As much as I love this idea, this could be a time consuming project, from finding the right clothing (thank goodness NYC is saturated with thrift shops) to getting the hair and makeup just right; not to mention actually setting up my camera to take the pictures and learning enough Photoshop to clean them up. I usually work with film, but it would be costly to work with right now, though the grittiness of film would work beautifully with this project.
Looking through my recent Tumblr posts, I saw a lot of work from photographers who adopt someone’s style and translate it through their own lens, literally. Though not exactly related to my topic, a photo set from an artist who took their own images and then manipulated them again to create entirely new photographs intrigued me. Another artist that I saw on Juxtapoz’s website does something similar, adding illustrations over her own images to create an additional layer of depth and artistry to their photos. It made me think that I could appropriate film stills and behind the scenes shots from the films and read them through Poe, including additional illustrations over them. In this case, I would print out the images, work on them by hand, and then scan and upload them onto my site.
Another idea was to create a sort of online graphic novel, using Hitchcock’s visuals with Poe’s text, either in plain text or as a voiceover using Vincent Price’s marvelous reading. Since I haven’t been able to find anything like it online to use as a point of reference, I’m not sure how far I can take this idea or even if it’s possible to complete within the next couple months.
Whichever project I end up pursuing, I still want it to speak to Poe and how his themes are traced through Hitchcock. I want this to be a very visual project, obviously, but I don’t want to lose the master of mystery in my quest to produce Hitchcockian visuals.
4 Comments
L. M. Freer
March 4, 2014I wonder if there’s a way to combine these two projects. I am intrigued by your description of the visual creations you want to make–but I feel like the work you propose doing by hand limits your digital possibilities and gets away from some of the core skills we want to focus on.
That said, if you created these images, could we possibly present them as a digital “graphic novel remix,” one with a loose (allusive) narrative structure. We could scan them at high quality and add the audio where appropriate (or other audio apart from Price’s reading). Try to create an immersive experience for the viewer? That could be hosted on an eportfolio fairly easily.
I would like you to refine this more definitively for next week–take all our thoughts into account, but try to write out or figure out who, exactly, the ideal audience is for this digital project. What should that ideal audience experience or feel, what should they take away from this project?
Colby Minifie
March 4, 2014I think your ideas are incredible and I’m excited to see all of them. I think the one that would best show your knowledge of both Poe and Hitchcock is the graphic novel. You could do what you were telling me before: still of Hitchcock with your own illustrations on top! This is perfect! I actually think using the Poe voice over to Hitchcock’s visuals (with your additions) sounds perfect perfect. I cannot wait to see this!
kerishma
March 4, 2014I think both of your thesis ideas are intriguing, and are a nice complement to your written project. I have to say I find the second one, the graphic novel idea, more intriguing than the photography project (also, maybe, more manageable?). I think putting the Poe text over Hitchcock’s images combined with the Vincent Price reading resonates really nicely with all of the talk of media remixing that we’ve been doing recently, and would present an interesting new and original way to interpret Hitchcock and Poe (two artists who have been analyzed and interpreted to death).
Jenny
March 4, 2014Laura, as I said, I love these photography ideas. I’m out of time to write it here, so I’ll just talk about it in class…