Back to the Future

When I first saw this project I found it pretty hilarious, but this idea is very clever, the personal portraits seem too resonant at the deepest of levels. Even though we don't know these people, it's a trip we all want to be involved with both in its charm and wonder. This is an opportunity not so much about looking at others but also thinking about ourselves. Our physical changes and our developmental journey from childhood onwards. The photographer Irina Werning literally offers her subjects the opportunity to go back to their future. She explains:

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else's house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it's imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Here these people are facing the absurdity of going back through time.

Irena Werning: Photographer

Illustrations Appeal

These Japanese posters, magazine covers and advertisements dated from the late 1920s are very beautiful and stylish compositionally. With a limited use of colour and elements placed on the page in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. These are partially interesting, not just because of their vintage appeal, but also because they serve to remind us of the allure and of illustration. They could form a solution to the visual problem we are facing on the web, as they look fast and cost effective to produce. 

Some are laced with text and some form colleges with photographs superposed and displaced with semi-transparent layers, others are coloured drawings with handcrafted letting. A great article by Khol Vihh: The sad story of illustration on the web (link) showcases the digital uses of poor stock imagery. This problem is basically caused by time and money. As a result in terms of imagination, whimsy, and political satire, these generic images often miss the hidden layers of meanings in the text. Also, the sameness doesn't serve to inspire or entertain and makes a reader more complacent. 

These posters serve and inspire me to grasp potential applications quite clearly; for example, political interests, fashion and beauty, aspirations and modernism. These posters prove just how effectively illustration creates its own distinction and that if used in conjunction with photography and text makes graphic media come alive.

Japanese graphic design from the 1920s-30s

Special thanks to Yvonne Moser and design northsouth for these links

Dahlia

Short stories: Dahlia is the result of a controlled chaotic filmmaking approach created by artist Michael Langan. It’s a stop-motion film compositionally exploring a series of themes, ranging in scale and subject matter from street level paving ground to the sea. Fixing key elements into a centralised mid position enables and maintains a kind of visual focus and continuity.

This film is more than just a camera technique. Clever layering and editing push the boundaries of storytelling and engagement. Using such methods create a deeper poetic resonance in the way that it repeats and glimpses back on things and people seen, viewing juxtapositions of objects from different angles, constantly, objectively; not looping the motion, but rather a continued exploration. Animating in sync with a soundtrack. The films depth, warmth and quality colour saturation makes this piece visually very beautiful.

His filming showed whimsical notions of human behaviour by the randomness of the background actions on the beach are both fun and intriguing. We are drawn into the pleasure of watching others; some are tagged, enabling a more coherent visual drama to evolve. Among many of the different themes, I loved how the iron railings curved spiral forms animated through many shots of different railing studies. Looking at such mundane details of an iron spiral on a railing is incredible, as we wouldn’t appreciate the very subtle differences in shape and form.

The Dahlia features quite late but makes your head spin with the stop-motion photography as it explores all sides of the thing. The filming camera technique is more revealed through the simplicity of the flower and thus makes the whole seem to flower literally. I would describe this piece as being both simple and complex simultaneously. I love the idea of the camera focusing on the themes centrally and the haphazardness of life playing out in a beat. Ironically it looks like this takes just minutes to record on the fly and edit together with sound, but as chaotic as this film seems to be, the filming of this I’m pretty sure wasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole consisted first through storyboards. This film short is just absolutely breathtaking.