Foot Washing Images

'Wash One Another's Feet'

As I mentioned I am thinking about photographing people washing other people's feet. For me this act is all about humility and  care. First you generally  have to lower yourself physically below the other person, then you have to touch part of the body which can be smelly and dirty. You have to be careful with feet, some people are ticklish! Also its important to dry between the toes properly which requires attention to detail. Personally I have washed  a lot of elderly people's feet whilst being a care assistant. It was not one of my favourite tasks and it reminded me how when we get old our toes curl, bunions form and skin flakes. However I tried to approach it tenderly. I have been doing a bit more research and found lots of biblical references and also after speaking to people found it is quite common in some churches for the priest/vicar to wash the feet of members of his/her congregation! 

In John 13:14-15 after washing the disciples feet Jesus says "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." John says one of the reasons he did this was to show them the full extent of his love.

Luke writes of a woman of supposed ill repute who washes Jesus's feet with her tears, drys them with her hair and pours perfume on them which again is spoken of as an act of love. Whilst the owner of the house, Pharisee, is shocked that Jesus lets her wash his feet, Jesus himself is very touched by her actions and reminds the Pharisee that he hadn't given him any water for his feet when he arrived. 7:36-50

I feel that feet washing is a powerful symbol of how we should treat one another with love and a reminder that the Bible states that everyone is the same in Gods eyes.

I originally visualised the image (s) as very light and have bought a large white bowl for the photo. Now I think I will try it both with lots of light and also a much darker version with careful sidelighting.

Back to Objects!

Trying to move back closer to my proposal I took these photos of objects and pictures in a friend's house. I am thinking that it may be easier to recreate the feeling of intimacy I associate with prayer and rituals such as communion and objects which help me to focus such as icons and candels in the studio where I have more control than I do in a church. Photgraphing in churches may be better for something a bit more photojournalistic.

Working with Narrative

2nd attempt after some feedback that the first image was too complicated.

I have been thinking about how to portray a more personal account of what my faith means to me and decided to use images to create a kind of loose narrative based on feelings more than words. I have included a verse from Psalm 23 with the first one but I will try to write some text myself ( I think text is probably necessary for any sense to be made of the images)   I am trying to convey the unnerving feeling I have while trying to allow God to lead me in life, not knowing where it will take me whilst holding onto the promises that he/she will stay close within and around me. Although Jesus asks people to follow him he doesn't promise the ride will be easy and says it will take his disciples out of their comfort zones. At the moment the images seem a bit bleak although I have ended each series with an image I want to convey the constant presence and sanctuary I believe God promises.I think if you click on the pictures you can see them a bit bigger.

Projections

                                      

                                          Chapel of hope (cheesy I know but its only a start)

I've been thinking about how to incorporate projection into my work and thought I could use the backdrop of chapels to comment on issues and bring the world into the church. This image brings the wider world with its hopes and needs within the walls of the church whose purpose is to serve bodies and minds as well as souls. I was also thinking of included less 'political' and more everyday imagery such as street and domestic scenes.

The images could allude to the churches role in important issues such as world poverty, homelessness or AIDs or alternatively with different imagery they could simply link God (symbolised by the Church) to everyday life.

Places of prayer

I took these in various churches, both local parish churches and a Cathedral. I have tried to place the camera at the same level and position of someone praying in front of the altar or shrine. Since prayer inside churches and before statues or icons is generally a quiet time of contemplation  I wanted the photographic process to reflect this so used neutral density filters to enable me to lengthen, the exposure as much as possible. I used this time to pray myself (an idea I got from reading about how the painters of icons consider prayer to be of utmost importance during the process). I began by using f22 to help lengthen the exposure but then realised that when I was looking while praying I concentrated on one thing like a face or a candel and everything else was out of focus so I started experimenting with shallower depths of fields. While I took the ones in the Cathedral there was someone was playing some amazing organ music which almost made the stone floor vibrate! 

Influences

Tracy Holland’s work combines light-boxes, projections, video and actual objects. It is visually seductive, drawing the viewer closer with its clever use of colour, composition and light whilst repelling them with the nature of the objects used such as dead animals. Her subject matter has been carefully chosen to point towards meaning in oblique rather than direct ways, for example a piece of pink coral used in her series Resurrection Stories suggests the sacred heart of Christ when exhibited with images of Christ taken from 16^th century paintings.

Helen Chadwick’s work is also metaphysically ambitious and mainly investigates issues surrounding the body and sexuality. According to Mark Sladen her work The Oval Court  can be seen to evoke the tradition of the vanitas. The photocopies of naked bodies, animals, birds and objects laid out on the floor being suggestive of human attachment to the world and sensuality while the images of Chadwick’s weeping self portraits look down from the walls as if reminding us of the transience of earthly things.  I am interested in how on first glance at Chadwick’s piece One Flesh we see a traditional ‘Madonna and Child’ and only after looking more closely do we realise how Chadwick has appropriated such familiar imagery to rewrite images of women by replacing the male Christ child with a female baby and the halo with a gold placenta. As for her Meat Abstracts I find it fascinating how use of light and context can transform objects and make even offal appear beautiful.

Bill Viola

National Gallery Visit

Last week I  visited the National Gallery to take a look at the use of objects in still life paintings. In 17^th century still life paintings some objects had clear symbolic meanings such as the skull which reminds the viewer of the certainty of death and others had more associative value such as the presence of Saint Sebastian and Cupid in Willem Kalf’s Still Life with Drinking-Horn which link it to the guild of archers it was commissioned by. Some paintings dealt more obviously with the vanitas themes of death, the transience of life and the futility of pleasure but others, whilst including certain vanitas objects, were more concerned with showing off the patron’s wealth. The idea of the vanitas still life comes from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (1:2): 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'.  In these paintings books symbolise human knowledge, musical instruments the pleasures of the senses. Collector’s objects such as shells symbolise wealth and clocks and lamps the transience of human life.

Writing about still life painting in the 18th century  R.G Saisselin comments that there was an ‘assumption of the universality of communication and reason’. In todays postmodern 21^st century society this is not an assumption I can make when it comes to my own work! He also states that ‘the presitge of painting at the end of the 18^th century owed much to the notion that its primary function was to illustrate thought.' This made me think about what I want my images to do. Should they exist simply to be ‘translated’ by the viewer into words and ideas? The danger of rejecting the idea of image as language is that it may lead into the modernist ‘image as aethetic art object’. I somehow want to find the middle ground of creating images which while they may encourage an intellectual response containing discursive, narrative, representational and imitative elements also effect the viewer in deeper more subconscious and emotive ways.

Fabricating Objects

I wondered if I could create a series of Christian symbols made from everyday materials so I had some fun making religious objects out of packets of sweets Interestingly a couple of people said they liked this image before realising what it was made from a tube of fruit pastilles, a pencil and half a plastic bottle To me this says something about the strength of a symbol and the way we almost don't see the object any more but ONLY the symbol! I do quite like the idea of creating work that doesn't actually use any religious objects at all and is subtler but it would take some thinking about!

Faith Today

These images are taken from my experiments thinking about how I could approach a photo shoot with a subject focusing on how their faith plays a part in their everyday life. In two weeks time I am going to Luton to photograph a Christian called Ish so I want to practice looking and photographing in a way that tells her story. I will follow her around for a day so I want to try and get the way I photograph clear in my head. She is Indian and works as a dance teacher, I want to take images that give a sense of her life as a whole.  I have been influenced by the work of Prabuddha Dasgupta and Elinor Carucci.

God in the Everyday

As I mentioned in my presentation, one idea I had was to ‘add’ ‘sacred’ objects to an everyday setting. Creating images that would make the viewer look twice. They are based on the idea of finding God in the everyday rather than looking for him/her in the more obvious location of religious buildings for example. If God stays ‘symbolically’ shut in the church a separation between faith and life may arise.

However, although people might question why there is a chalice in the cupboard I'm not sure they would find any deeper meaning behind the image.

Found Still Life images taken in St.Peter's Church

                                           

                                        

The next thing I tried was to photograph ‘found’ still life images taken in St. Peter’s church, Yateley. I found that ‘sacred’ objects (or objects used in rituals) were left lying around with everyday objects that often have a practical use. The clock was positioned so the vicar could see the time when he was conducting the service for example and the bottle of hand sanitizer was placed on a shelf next to the alter. I also took some ‘interior’ shots of the rooms the public wouldn’t normally enter such as the choir vestry which were full of drum kits, boxes of Christmas decorations, rolls of cloth and a model of a new Church building complex. As well as liking the idea of being nosey and poking around a variety religious buildings I think the images may be able to say something of the daily life of the church. The jumble of objects I came across reminded me of how the location of an object transforms the way we view it. Like an icon in a quiet candle lit chapel compared to one in a brightly lit glass cabinet in the national gallery.

1st Attempt

Here  I've juxtaposed ‘sacred’ objects with more mundane ones, experimenting with the idea of objects as symbols and how unusual juxtapositions can alter how we read them. Although I have my own ideas about what each image represents, the viewer is left to make their own connections. For example, the image of the chalice surrounded by rubbish for me suggests how the blood of Christ symbolised by the wine in the chalice washes us clean from sin during the service of Holy Communion. For someone else the image could be quite shocking or mean something completely different but the hope would be that it creates some sort of response (emotional/intellectual?) from the viewer as they try to make sense of it. This work has made me aware that I am approaching symbolism from a very naive semantic position and need to spend more time researching in this area.

The technical approach, almost like product shots for a magazine, removes any sense of mystery from the objects, divesting from them their ‘aura’ of holiness. I also need to think more about where I take the photographs as context plays such an important part in how we read an image. In some ways divorcing the object from its traditional setting might enable us to see it afresh however if the image focuses the viewer on the material properties of the object it may lose all connection with theological concepts and deeper meanings.