Stories - Research and Book Experiments

In our lessons we have been given the theme of stories. This could have a variety of meaning for example teaching and learning from stories or to inform future generations of events that have happened. I researched Egyptian hieroglyphics and found out about the Rosetta Stone. It was found in 1799 by a group of french soldiers. It is believed that it is a way of translating the hieroglyphs, however nobody knew how to speak ancient Egyptian for eight centuries so did not know how to pronounce or say any of the words. The stone was inscribed with a decree that is split into three languages ancient Egyptian, Demotic script and ancient Greek, but with the same meanings. The decree established the cult of the new ruler. This is very much like what Hitler did, making sure his is the only story so everybody listens to him.



I also researched an artist named Thomas Allen. He finely cuts out pieces from books, encyclopedias and old school books to create 3D shapes that creatively tell stories. I like his photographs because of the creativity, detail and care he takes in every project that he does.

He gets many of his ideas from magazines and books that he has seen with examples that he could use.

I like the way he changes some of his images just by adding a creative title, for example, one of his images was a dog with mechanical work as its body. This confused me and I did not understand why it was there until I saw the title, 'Watch Dog' which I found funny and clever.


In the lseeon I tried some experiments with a book and trying to photograph the book in different ways to see how I could portray the book. I started in the dark room simple changing shutter speeds to get the correct lighting and settings.
I then ripped part of a page and lifted it to see if it would create a shadow or change the light.

After I came out of the dark room, I was trying to think of other things I could do with the book so I searched through some of Thomes Allen's photos and found one of the corner of a book with a sentence highlighted.

I thought that I could try something similar to this and opened the book on a random page and circled powerful and strong words such as 'life' with a red pen. I started by only doing the bottom corner of the page but gradully did more so I did the bottom third with all the columns however I folded two of the pages so the three columns were from different pages.

I researched a street photographer called Adde Adesokan. I enjoy looking at his photographsAfter looking through some of his images, I found that in many of his photos it shows emotion and you get a variety of feelings from the photographs.
When I saw this photograph I immediately thought of loneliness and sadness. I think this is because of the lighting, use of shadow and positioning of the man and how he is looking down at the floor which often represents the man being upset.

The next image made me think of curiosity and also being frightened. It reminds me of when a child has done something wrong and is hiding from their parents. It also reminds me of when my brother would chase me and I would slowly sneak back into the room. Along with many of his photographs it makes me think of loneliness. The way the light is used in this photograph changes the way the eye is lead around the image. Without the strong light on the girls faces with darkness surrounding her then the eye might be lead to what the girl is holding instead of the facial expression of the girl.


Many of his photographs use the idea of the unknown by covering peoples faces with an object or darkness which creates the feeling of sadness or loneliness. It also takes away the distraction of faces because they can change the focus of the image so people look at the face instead of the person or what the intention of the photographer is.