December 2019 Challenge
I drew the subject Window on the world as the December challenge...
My initial thoughts ran to:
1 Windows on a globe, a globe seen through a window, spacecraft window - framing the world or a frame as the window through which you see;
2 This tells my age ... the earth being a cuboid as seen through a spacecraft window... [Its a Square World - the 1960s Michael Bentine satirical TV programme];
3 The concept of a window on the world... the internet, TV and encyclopaedias together with current affairs programmes all reflect this;
4 The slogan used by Christian Aid for one of their campaigns;
5 The idea of the world being limited to what is seen through your window with a mobility chair showing to suggest that access to the wider world was limited;
6 Taking what is seen through a window and exploring it visually to provide something different - an alternative view or as seen through someone else eyes;
7 Photograph of eyes - an individual's window on the world - probably as a composite image with perhaps 15 pairs of eyes within a 3x5 framework.
8 Surveillance - what has become the almost unacceptable window on the world, GCHQ / CIA etc when used or misused for control and power.
9 Eavesdropping, monitoring signals, GCHQ, the local radio frequency monitoring facility, Air Traffic and coastguard control centres...
10 The first camera to be a window on the world was probably the Leica as used to capture images everywhere, as a photographer our camera becomes our window.
... and there are many others without me venturing into space...
An example of 6 is a photograph I made many years ago I call 'The Watcher' of an individual in a home who would sit for hours just watching 'round the corner' seeing what went on but not really visible except for his head. Like many images under the concept of the watcher they are also being observed and here it is a window into his world in the home.
Shortly after receiving the challenge I worked on some frames for an old image of a boy looking up at the windows of the tower block where he lived - a social documentary black and white picture where the watcher is looking back at all the windows of the high-rise tower that look onto the world The window on the boys world.... Secondly the sunrise as seen through a window at home after I had the challenge was an instant capture with two images where both were expanded beyond the window frame - an early morning or new day window on my world. In the gallery below there are the original photographs with the final version. I also visited an artist lat week and after making a portrait I processed the result to produce something in a style of their work - a window on their world. From a distance you may see the face of a golden retriever and although I have one, no animals were used or harmed during the making of this work... the face appeared from shapes as I was applying overlays and rotating the canvas! These three subjects became the first completed images for the challenge.
02 December 2019
I also sent off last week for a world balloon - with ideas of it appearing through the window etc so some test images the window was under the balloon and then inverted. The light direction on the world is not as I would like but that will require time with a proper studio setup. The concept works though.
09 December 2019
Further work on the balloon creating an image that could be from an orbiting spaceship or of a monitor of the earth.
14 December 2019
Work on the eyes images.
16 December 2019
Here are some of the images... and below the final selection
Martin's FPS Chllenges
The edit to the final three, four or Five images
Some of the images feature in more than one gallery.
However, if I had to chose an image that sums up the concept of a Window on the World it is the 45 year old image of 'The Watcher' shown in B&W above but in colour, as was the original here. A Documentary image where the camera is the window sometimes r revealing hitherto unseen sights, sometimes simply recording life as we see it. This work is of The Watcher looking at another world, our world, whilst at the same time we, the viewer, are able to catch a glimpse of his world - so who does the 'my world' belong to: the viewer or the watcher, or is it the person going past in the wheelchair. The grain, the almost silhouette appearance of the man in the wheelchair and the third person in the hospital bed add to the mystery. The Watcher spent hours watching round the doorway. It was what he did: his purpose.
