Martina Mullaney

Martina Mullaney is an Irish photographer, born in 1972, currently living and working in London, UK. She is very well known for her project 'Turn In', for which she photographed lots of beds in hostels and night shelters. Another well known project is 'Dinner for One', which features many dining tables and other areas set up with a single plate of food.

For her 'Turn In' project, Mullaney visited many different hostels and night shelters, bringing across the the loneliness and isolation of the people using those beds. These are actually themes that show in a lot of Mullaney's work. The prints are beautiful, large-scale and full of colour. It is only after viewing them for a while that the sense of loneliness and sadness kicks in.

The 'Dinner for One' project is very similar and actually accompanies the 'Turn In' project. Again, the loneliness and melancholy are there. Mullaney wanted to show the decline of the ritual of the evening meal and the increase of people eating alone.

Again, as with so many of these interior photographers, I am surprised about my feelings of her work. The empty beds, the lonely plates on tables, they shouldn't interest me. I would've never looked at photographs like these in the manner I do now. In the past, I would've thought they were boring. Now, I find them fascinating. They're really simple photographs, but what they're trying to bring across is quite a strong message.



Image Sources:
http://www.source.ie/artists/artistsM/artmulmar.html
http://www.yossimilo.com/artists/mart_mull/

Location Photography - Interior Brief

The idea for my interior brief came along while I was talking to my tutor, Sian. Several ideas were going through my head, but because this was something that was totally out of my comfort zone when it comes to photography, I simply didn't have a clue where to go or how to set things up. At first, because I was very impressed with my Sian's photography, I thought about doing a similar project. That was, until she mentioned Simryn Gill to me.

Simryn Gill is a photographer from Singapore. I have a post in my blog about her in case you wanted to know a little more. Gill did a project called Dalam (2001). It was a project containing 258 photographs for which she travelled across the Malaysian Peninsula, knocking on the doors of total strangers and asked them if she could photograph their living rooms.

Hearing about her, it really sparked something inside me. I wanted to try this too. However, unlike Gill, who found most people were more than happy for her to take a photograph of their living rooms, there weren't many that felt confident enough to allow me into their homes. Truth be told, I struggled getting the nine separate images together for this brief. To me, that shows the difference in country and culture between Gill and myself. Here in Europe, there aren't many places where people are confident enough to invite a total stranger into their homes anymore. Whether that's because they like to keep themselves to themselves, they're scared I could be recording what's there to plan a burglary or perhaps the houses are full of stolen goods they wouldn't want on camera. I'm not sure about the reasons. But some of the looks I got would suggest I am the world's biggest criminal mastermind.

Part of Gill's Dalam project

My aim was to present a final image that represents people's lives. The photographs aren't overly composed and look slightly chaotic, which to me was to symbolise the lives of the people that own these rooms. Life isn't perfect. From homes with little children to the living room of an older lady that has recently passed away, every single one of these rooms would tell its own story. And that's what this was about for me. They're simply a tiny slice of someone's life. This image below is how this collection should be viewed. Not as the individual photographs, but as a collection. Almost as tho they're hanging on a wall in a gallery. The result of a project that turned out a lot harder than expected.

Looking at my images, I probably should have kept going to try and get more images and create a bigger and more impressive collection. It was so much harder than expected tho, which I think made me give up a lot sooner than I perhaps should have. That's not to say I didn't spent a lot of hours on this, but I think a bigger collection would've been nice. Another thing that has disappointed me is that one of the images has a blur on it. I am not sure about the reason for this, other than that the focus must've shifted when taking the shot. But the worst thing is that I did not notice this until I got the photograph printed in A3 format. The lack of money has prevented me from getting a new photograph and a new collective image printed out. It probably would've been nice if I would've been in posession of a wider lens, because it's surprising how small some rooms are and that way I would've been able to fit more in my images. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the outcome. It does what I wanted it to do and it has been a great experience as well. Very daunting, but a reasonably original idea.


Image Source:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/simryn-gill 

Lamya Gargash

Lamya Gargash was born in 1982 in Dubai, UAE. To this day, she still lives and works there. She has won several awards by documenting the private places and forgotten spaces in the Emirati society. Gargash studied Visual Communications at the American University in Sharjah and graduated there in 2004.

She takes photographs of unwanted buildings. From the semi-abandoned to the soon-to-be demolished. She has documented this very well in one of her projects called 'Presence'. A series of photographs that show a young culture that, after the oil boom, came to life and is now quickly becoming extinct because of the need to modernise everything at amazing speed. According to Gargash this leaves very little time to grief over spaces like this and therefore felt the old culture needed to be documented before this new identity was to take over. Although that is just one series, most of her photographs seem to follow this theme.

Her images really bring across this feeling of being abandoned to me. Looking at them and trying to put myself in the environment, I almost get the feeling I have to get out before the wrecking ball comes flying in. Dark rooms, empty kitchens and broken staircases make for stunning images of otherwise forgotten places. Really quite impressive. I never imagined I would've been impressed with images like this, but for some reason they have really touched something inside me.

Image Sources:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/el-resplandor.html

Simryn Gill

Simryn Gill was born in 1959 in Singapore. She was raised in Malaysia and is now based in Sydney, Australia. Part of Gill's education took place in India and Great Britain.

She is an artist and a photographer who, by finding, collecting and using everyday objects, creates involving art objects. Examples of this are Red Hot (1992), a Native American headdress created from dried chillies. Forking Tongues (1992), a spiral created using things found in the kitchen, such as cutlery and dried chillies. And Wonderlust (1996), a suit created using coconut shells. A lot of Gill's art uses objects unique to her experience and with those objects and artifacts she draws upon parts of her culture and the cultures she grew up with. She also uses words in her art.

Gill has been the main inspiration for my interior brief. Whilst she is very well known for the photographs of the objects and artifacts mentioned earlier, it was her Dalam (2001) project that I based my images on. To form that project, Gill took 258 photographs. She travelled across the Malaysian Peninsula and knocked on the doors of strangers, asking if she could take a photograph of their living room.

I find her work fascinating. Projects such as Dalam, as well as the photographs of her art. Her art engages people. It makes people think about her travels, about the places and cultures where these objects and artifacts came from. From doing a similar thing to Dalam, I know how daunting it can be to do something like that. The funny thing is that in my project, hardly anyone allowed me to take a photograph of their living room. Whereas Gill found that surprisingly, almost everyone was happy to let her take a photograph. I hope it's nothing to do with me. But really, to me, that shows the differences in countries and cultures.


Image Sources:
http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/collection/contemporary_asian_art/simryn_gill
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/simryn-gill