developing research and ideas...

After one of our lectures, i was given some information about the photographer, Danny Treacy. I was really inspired by this photographer, and helped me dig deeper into what i want to portray throughout my work. 

British photographer Danny Treacy is currently showing his ongoing series of life size portraits ‘them’. The photographs depict Treacy dressed in outfits made from discarded clothing and other props against black backgrounds. the strange outfits obscure Treacy’s face creating a sinister and eerie air to the pictures. Treacy graduated from London's royal college of art in 2002 when the photographers' gallery awarded him with their graduate award.

“they are us and they are them. they are the work of Danny Treacy. they are

the figments of his imagination and desire. they are made from recovered

clothes, collected from those lonely places - the woods, the wasteland,

the car-parks. they are re-stitched and re-fashioned: re-modelled into junk

monsters. they are nightmares of the catwalk, prowling around the outskirts

of style's dumb extravagance.”

when reading i learnt, Danny collects old clothes in woods, wastelands or car-parks. Then he stitches the single pieces together to make these weird suits. When he wears those suits he becomes them.

Texts

Them

What circus is this? What strange ghosts are they that loom out of the darkest black, the last place in our dreams? They are us and they are Them.

They are the work of Danny Treacy. They are figments of his imagination and desire. They are made from recovered clothes. They are from those lonely places, the woods, the wastelands, the car-parks. They are re-stitched and re-fashioned: re-modelled into junk monsters. They are nightmares of the catwalk, prowling around the outskirts of style's dumb extravagance.

They belonged to the unknown and the anonymous. They are the lost, the deranged, the sexually driven and, who knows, the dead. They are the sinister carnival playing in the street. They are the music we dread to hear. They confront us and they defy us. They take a chance on our presence. They take a chance on existence. They are Danny Treacy dressed-up.

They mask his identity. They become the confined space of his transgression. They are charged in this way. They are the places where he is close to Them.

They are awkward. They are contorted. They are the body harnessed, the body pinched, the body stitched-up. They have those Frankenstein, stiff-legged poses. They are B-movie cut-outs. They are Dada and they are Pop. They are the friends of Surrealism: shouting anarchy, whispering perversion. They are sampled pieces, cross-dressed collages, mix-gendered melodramas: part nasty, part nice.

They are the suits, the jeans, the rubber gloves. They are the workers and they are the dancers. They are the porno tea-break, the sexed-up secrets. They are rough trade. They are the soldiers. They have the armour and the equipment. They are medieval, the spice of old England. They are the danger-men, the shit-kickers. They are ready. They are tooled-up. They are tight and they are fit.

They are soiled and stained and perfectly formed. They are the shapes around which menace lingers. They are intimate and they are a violation. They are the victors and the victims. They are the kiss and the tell. They are true and they are false.

David Chandler, Director Photoworks. 2007.

 

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers[] regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important centre of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

watched a documentary about the Contrasting Lives of Bin men

For ten days London bin man Wilbur Ramirez worked in Indonesia, collecting the rubbish from the homes in the capital city, Jakarta. He joined Imam Syaffi, a local Sampa (residential rubbish collector), as he went door to door in a wealthy neighbourhood, taking away the rubbish in his rickety handcart. On Wilbur’s last day he gave Imam the day off and did his round for him.

Imam invited Wilbur to stay in his home, a tiny shack near a small rat-infested rubbish dump, and they quickly became friends. Wilbur and Imam are both devoted family men who work hard and like a laugh. They both do the same job, but their lives couldn’t be more different.

Job title: Refuse truck driver / loader.

Age: 43.

Location: Hammersmith and Fullham, West London.

Salary: £1700 per month.

Typical working day:

Wilbur wakes up around 4.00am and gets to the depot by 5.45am. After his daily checks on the lorry, he leaves the yard by 6.00am, picking up his colleagues on the way to wherever they will be starting that day’s round.

Together they fill up the lorry, with rubbish in one side and recycling in the other, and then take it to the tip. Once there, they empty the lorry’s load and grab a cup of tea before heading back to fill the vehicle again. This second load goes to a different tip, but at both places they unload the rubbish and recycling separately.

Wilbur’s day ends with him driving back to the depot to fill up the lorry with diesel so it’s ready to go the next day. He also completes some paperwork about any problems or defects, then hands back the keys, books off and goes home.

 

Wilbur Ramirez

Wilbur Ramirezhas been a bin man in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for six years, and he still loves his job. Every morning, while most people are still in bed, he’s at the depot picking up his high-tech ten-ton truck, collecting his two colleagues and setting off on his round. He collects the rubbish from around sixteen hundred houses, in a different part of the borough, every day. His patch includes some of the richest streets in London, but also some of the poorest.

As soon as they’ve collected all the rubbish on their patch and taken it to the dump, Wilbur and his crew can knock off work and go home. So if they work as a team and get the job done quickly, they can be home by 1.00pm - with the rest of the day to do what they like.

The job can be pretty stinky, especially in the summer when there are sometimes maggots in the rubbish. To make it bearable, Wilbur likes to have a laugh as he works. He and the boys often play pranks on each other, like throwing eggs or jumping out from behind something and saying "Boo!" It’s childish stuff, but it makes the day more fun.

There are also some unexpected perks to the job - like the bakers who give the bin men the most delicious cakes every week as a thank you for the good job they’re doing. At Christmas and Easter they often get generous tips from local residents. But not everyone is nice to the bin men. The bane of Wilbur’s life is drivers who come up behind the lorry and beep their car horn furiously as they try to get past the large vehicle. He wishes people would treat bin men with a little more respect, because without them there would soon be piles of rubbish on street corners and rats everywhere.

Wilbur is a real family man. His wife Nikky and their four children Jay, Olivia, Maya and Marlon are his life. He loves the fact that after a full day’s work he can be home when his daughter returns from school and take her and the little ones to the park.

 

Imam Syaffi

Imam Syaffi has been a Jakarta rubbish collector, or Sampa, for three years. Though it’s a really tough job, in some ways he’s grateful to have it.

Imam has an agreement with two residents’ associations in South Jakarta to collect the rubbish from the homes of people in the area. In return, he’s guaranteed a regular monthly salary. Unfortunately for Imam, the money he earns only covers his rent. For food and other essentials he has to work in the evenings, sorting through rubbish for anything which can be sold for recycling. He collects plastic, metal, paper – almost anything he can sell, except for polystyrene.

Imam gets up at 6.00am every morning. After a quick coffee, he leaves for his round. It’s a twenty-minute walk from his home to where his handcart is parked. He checks it over, oils the wheels, makes sure he has all his kit – the claw, the brooms, the basket - and then he’s away. He works until around midday, usually making two trips back to the dump to unload the rubbish. It’s really hard work because the cart is quite rickety and the wheels don’t pump up very well, and when it’s full it weighs a lot.

Around midday, when it's really hot, Imam takes a break for a few hours. He has lunch with his wife, plays with his baby son and does any errands. Sometimes he even manages to go and play a game of football with his friends, the other Sampas. At around 3.00pm Imam returns to work to finish off his round, which involves one or sometimes two more trips to the dump. The worst time for him is the rainy season, when it's really hard to stop the drains getting blocked with leaves and overflowing as a result.

Imam is married to Windi and they have a baby son named Malik. The couple met in the village from where both their families originate, which is in central Java. After marrying Imam, Windi moved into the tiny two-room plywood shack he grew up in and where his parents still live. The shack is situated a few feet away from the mosquito-infested dump where Imam and the other Sampas unload their rubbish. When their baby was born, Imam decided that his family had to move - especially after Windi was bitten on the leg by a rat while she was sleeping.

Although the documentary was not based on my theme of fashion, i still found the video really interesting and fascinating to watch, as the series documented how waste has a massive role on today's society, and how the public can change certain aspects for good or bad?