Sidra Saeedzada
Photography
Idris Khan
For my third artist, I have created a moodboard showing the different type of photographs Idris Khan takes, for example my focus on the photoshoot is to capture images around Central London such as London Eye, Tower Bridge, Big Ben and House of Parliament and double expose all images and layer it.
Artist Analysis
For my 3rd Artist Research I have decided to look at the work of Idris Khan. Idris Khan is a London based photographer and was born in Birmingham in 1978, when he completed his degree with a Distinction in Research at the Royal College of Art in London 2004. The work completed by Idris Khan is based on literature, history, art, music and religion, he works through the variety of media which includes photography, video and sculpture and Islam due to his families that ties with the religion. Idris Khan creates work on the identity of a country or city as a whole and shows identity as an individual person for example he captures the images of the Quran and double exposes them each over each other making the edited image look vintage and worn out. As well as his work being supported by two dealer artists Victoria Miro in London and Sean Kelly in New York, he has received an OBE in 2017. Idris Khan's focus in editing the images is adding layers of the image above each other and changing the filter of the photograph, however his work is different compared to other artists as Idris Khan does not only capture images of similar things and focuses on identity as a person and their beliefs. I think that the work of the Quran edit is something that is related with identity as it shows the identity of Idris Khan and his beliefs, for him, he doesn't only show the identity of him as an individual but his family and the people he has relations to. His work is famous for multi-layered photographs, painting and sculptures. The edit with the Quran rose rapidly due to his creativity of editing images. Building up layers of the images, the work took him two months to complete. From 13th April 2021- 15 May 2021 in the Victoria Miro Gallery 28 small format works of Idris Khan was displayed. With the work done at this period, he stated that even though this year has been stressful for him and not easy going due to the pandemic, he decided to show how he felt using his paintings and sculptures and applied them onto aluminium creating 28 overall.
This photograph shows a way of identity and how it links with himself, however his work isn't always based on one thing but also identity as a community, this shows us that Idris Khan wants people to understand the meaning of identity with other people. I think that the Quran edit is something that I could look at doin as it is something that I personally relate to and I find the photographs, paintings and sculpturing interesting as its much more easier compared to the other two artists I have looked at as for Idris Khan identity doesn't have one meaning but multiple. Most of the edits done by Idris Khan are in black & white shades but it also has a damaged look. The edit of the Quran was taken, layered on the first photograph and continued the same. editing to give the overall photograph a blur and make it have an unrealistic affect. He does this with all his photographs but sometimes changes the angle and places them at a different position each time, aiming to get different angled photographs.
Idris Khan's studio is full of light, showing the bright effects of some of his photographic paintings he has created. He doesn't only focus on images around the street and landmarks around London but also creates paintings and sculptures that relate to identity. In relations to Idris Khan's family, his mother died a few years back and his father came to the UK for Pakistan 40 years ago, and had the hope for his children to learn and read the Quran. This gave the idea for bringing his beliefs and religion to the work he does based on identity. In 2005 Idris Khan studied photography in the Royal College Of Art in London and created a series of images drawn from the pictures 2 German Photographers had taken. He got married to someone called Annie, doing this it changed his life as he says that 'she had bought colour into his work and life.' I find the photographs Idris Khan has edited interesting as he creates his photograph in a dark tone and makes them look like something found from centuries ago. This makes the images look surreal as they are something you would find around Central London but he layers the same photograph multiple times and adds a coloured filter above the overall artwork.
"my images are something that is not a frozen moment, but an image made up of many moments and that is created over time rather than taken."
"A lot of people in the art world hate to use the word 'photoshop,' like it is cheating or easy or something."
"Don't be put off by someone telling you that your image looks too digital; maybe that's the way it's supposed to look."
Photoshoot Plan
Contact-sheet
I have created two contact sheets of all my raw images and combined it altogether creating a page of all the images I will be editing and the images that have something wrong about them. The ones I have circled are the images that I plan on editing and make them look similar to the work of Idris Khan and the images I have crossed out are the photographs that I do not find useful or related to the work of Idris khan, I have visited landmarks around the location.
I have selected a couple images to edit of the similar photo for example the London Eye, I have chosen multiple photos to edit but of the same image. I did this to show the different ways one photograph can be edited and it would show the different techniques I could use in the style of Idris Khan. The contact sheet places all my images together forming pages of them and shows the images that are going to be edited this makes it easier for me, as I can already have the idea of how I am going to be editing them.
Photoshoot edits
I have created multiple edits from the raw photographs of Central London and double exposed some of them or mirrored them to create a surreal image. I changed the filter of these photographs and made them more vintage like the images edited by Idris Khan. For certain of these images I have double exposed them and mirrored them as well and other images have been double exposed with another area in London, bringing the different areas of London together and combine them creating one artwork. For my further developments I will be experimenting with the different concepts that the artist uses in photoshop and attempt to do the same. At first I changed all the images to black & white and changed the opacity, tone and added filter and noise. Doing this it shows the different ways experimenting with photography and the work of Idris Khan.
Further Developments
For my further developments I continued the work of editing my first photoshoot, but this time, I edited a few of the images I decided not to edited for my first developments, this is because I wanted to see how the images I chose not to do anything to and experiment different things with these images, however for the way I edit the images is similar to my first photoshoot, I did this because I thought of seeing the other few ways Idris Khan does his image editing and linking my work to Idris Khan's ones. I experimented these images in other places and changing the angles of it.
Contact sheet II
For my second photoshoot I have visited the same place and captured images once again similar to Idris Khan and visited places like London Eye, Big Ben and House Of Parliament, however when capturing the images I thought about the composition and angles of the images and tested out the many more different ways to edit these photographs. For the contact sheet I circled the images that I plan to edit, this is because when editing the photograph itself it will be clear to me the raw photograph and compare it to the edited version of the same image. Reasons for as I didn't select all images to edit is because some of the photographs are not clear enough for me to edit and to experiment the different techniques on photoshop. Doing this I can figure out more advanced techniques to editing, some of these images contain things that I wouldn't want to be in the image, so they have been crossed out so people who view the work would be able to understand that those photographs wont be edited, a few of these images haven't been crossed out or circled as I am unaware of what should be done to them.
Redraft
I have edited a selection of my raw images and created different types of edits, altogether the edited images all follow the same routine and have the same concepts of editing and how the image is done the way its done. Things that has been done different in these photographs are that with some of these images I have added noise to make the image look more different. I have also changed the tone and shade of the colour lookup and made some of the photographs have a natural look whereas others look like something has been done to the image. In order to link to my other artists such as Jasper James, I have double exposed the image of my edit with raw photographs of different hand positioning to show the link throughout my images.
Further Developments
For my further developments I used the hand images and an image of one of my edited buildings. Once doing this, I layered the photographs together and changed the theme of the photograph so that only the building is visible through the hand and nowhere else. After I did this, I used the 'burn tool' on photoshop and made the surroundings darker so that only the hand is visible. However for one of the edits I experimented with using a full image and adding a hand photograph over it, I did this to show the different ways of editing one image in a different style. This shows my development and experimenting with all sources of photographs, however the techniques of editing the image was still the same, only a few parts were missing out when editing the images. I made all of these photographs black and white to show the different ways one photograph can be edited.
Highlighting success
Out of all the images I have edited the one that I am most proud of is this image, this is because I managed to make the photograph look similar to the images Idris Khan has edited. For this photograph I changed the photograph to black & white and flattened the image so when double exposing the image it doesn't copy only one raw photograph and altogether edits it all as one piece. After I over layer the edit multiple time to give it a blur and to link with the work of Idris Khan, I them mirrored the image to make it look like a reflection even though Idris Khan does not do this, it shows that I am both experimenting and developing the photograph. I used the colour lookup layer to make the image more vintage and something that you wouldn't be able to find in these modern looking places. Once I did this I flattened the image another time and added noise making the image look like an art work from centuries ago, this is because it looks much more related to Idris Khan, and the way he has edited his images throughout for identity.