D700,f/4,ISO200,50mm,1/30
My notes:
I love the irony of this image. Vain hope – cornered and left in the gutter. For me, the image reminded me of Diane Airbus ‘ Identical Twins’. The longer one looks at the image, the more appears to be read and not just viewed (Clarke,G.1997:29). Our perceptions and experience of the World will help us to unpick the significance of an image. Today’s hopeful lottery tickets, now left in the gutter and cornered, clinging to each other before their fate is met.
From a literal design point of view, the implied triangle of the wall contains the image and the triangle is repeated in the front meeting point of the tickets. The implied lines of the tickets and vicinity to each other almost gives an air of clinging on to each other. We can see evidence of Gestalt in the law of segregation and law of common fate, law of similarity and, finally law of simplicity. I am still debating if this could be considered as a law of closure too. Although placing the tickets central in the frame could be interpreted as boring (Freeman,M.2007: 24), there wasn’t any justification in placing them elsewhere and the overall balance of the image works as it is.
Tutor notes:
This is an interesting concept – the lottery tickets cast aside – but it looks set up. Maybe if they were crumpled or placed with other debris it would ring true.
Freeman is quite right when he talks about centrally composed subject matter. Here, you might have explored the context better if the tickets were further apart or framed to include more of the background.
While ‘Our perceptions and experience of the World will help us to unpick the significance of an image.’ It can also push us to look for meaning that isn’t there, and we have to be wary of this. ‘We can see evidence of Gestalt in the law of segregation and law of common fate, law of similarity and, finally law of simplicity. It’s a bit over the top – does the course programme notes refer to Gestalt Theory?
My response:
This image is certainly not set up and the crispness of the tickets was the draw to the image. Subjectively you take what you want from an image but leaving the tickets as if they were clinging to each other before the process of being trampled into the mud was a very conscious decision based on the symbolism. The course notes perhaps do not use the name/ word ‘Gestalt’ but the Gestalt theory is where the course content is drawn from and alludes to it across the pages. In Michael Freeman’s ‘The Photographer’s Eye’ (which i believe the course is taken from?) there is a chapter on the subject on Page 38. As psychology of images is an area of interest for me, I wanted to include it.
Claire Borlase - Learning Log. 