Courtney Mannion --Senior Portfolio 09: Past Work

Honestly, I feel a little bit silly making this my artist research post but this is something I go back to time and time again and whenever I look at it I just sigh because it is so beautiful to me. I know beautiful is a word we're not supposed to use, and maybe my judgement is clouded a bit because of what this actually is but I suppose I should get on with it. The artists that I listed in the title were all involved in creating this:

It is the special edition packaging of the CD Sing the Sorrow by the band AFI. I suppose what's brought me back to it recently is the fact that the band have since put out a new CD and have been on tour so they are weighing heavily on my mind at the moment. Regardless though, I think this book is a perfect physical embodiment of the record itself. Here are a couple more pictures of the inside of the book because I don't think that the image above goes into as much detail as I want.

The four preceding images were taken by me with my webcam.

Right off the bat, I feel like this relates to my work at least in the sense that I this band is the reason that I make art, or rather, they are the reason I pursued wanting to show my art to people. Even better, they are the reason I actually chose to make something worth paying attention to (I do feel like my work needs to be paid attention to, I don't know that I've gotten that across). The band themselves helped create this book in the sense that their music is what influenced the artists who put the book together. From that influence came the final result. I feel like this book is a beautiful accompaniment to the music and it encompasses the entire aesthetic of the band at the time and the record.

I couldn't really find much information on the photographer who created the images for the book (Matthew Welsh) so I'm not really sure how much I can say about him. The art direction was done by Morning Breath Inc and since this they have worked with AFI quite a few other times but never quite reaching the perfection of this piece. They do a lot of mainstream work and at current a lot of what they do is influenced by old school concert posters:

The preceding two images are screenshots from Morning Breath Inc's website.

Alan Forbes is a "punk rock" concert poster creator who has worked with AFI in the past as well as since this particular album. Here are some of the album art he's created for them:

I have made a book before and I loved showing my work in that way. It's such an intimate way to present work as the audience gets to hold the book in their hands and turn the pages and be a part of the story, which is something that is typically discouraged with art. Here are some pictures of the book I'd made before:

The four preceding images were taken by me with my webcam.

My only concern there is I'm starting to wonder if I should show it that way again or if I should show the prints big and in an enclosed space like I did for my critique. I really liked the feedback that I got with how the enclosed space made people feel, the unease that I created which was something that I'd wanted to create for concepts. Though I think the book would be terribly intimate, I'm not sure if it would create the same kind of looming, brooding, discomforting feel of the larger images in the smaller space, which is more of what I want. Another thing that could be a problem with the book would that I think it would become too personal and it would become more about specificity of events than the feeling I'm trying to illicit from the viewer.

Morning Breath Inc's Website
Alan Forbes' Website (i think...)

I've been thinking a lot over the summer break about what I wanted to do for senior year. I've been trying to come up with something for a really long time now and I keep finding hazy close ups of people floating around in my head. With this in mind, I'm thinking that I want to do non-traditional portraits, close-ups and then the person doing something else (I haven't figured out what) in an image that is taken from farther away. Whatever it is I decide for them to do, I'm going to want that to be the "meat and potatoes" of the piece and have it connect all of the people somehow.

I really want to focus on the person in the image and their emotions. I'm still pondering aesthetics and how EXACTLY I want everything to look, but I do know I want grit and melancholy but I am going to try it in a way I haven't before.

As far as generating a question goes, I know that with a lot of my critiques I don't really say much about my work as far as content goes. I make each piece with something in mind but I don't like to force that on my audience. Do you feel like I should maybe make my images with a more straight-forward message? Should I leave them as ambiguous, allowing for the viewer to inject their own story upon them? Am I just imagining that there is content where there isn't any but rather a façade?

Here are some images of my own and of other Photographers that are going to be my inspirations for this year:

Julia Margaret Cameron