Beky Does University

  “ A typology is assembled by observation, collection, naming and grouping. These actions allow the members of the class to be compared, usually in search of broader patterns .”  - Marc Freidus Typology  is the study of "types", and a photographic  typology  is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner.  The art of Photographic Typologies has its roots in  August Sander’s  1929 series of portraits entitled "Face of Our Time", a collection of works documenting German society between the two World Wars. Sander sought to create a record of social types, classes and the relationships between them, and recognised that the display of his portraits as a collection revealed so much more than the individual images would alone. So powerful was this record, the photographic plates were destroyed and the book was banned soon after the Nazis came into power four years later. The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a styl

“A Portrait! What could be more simple and more complex. More obvious and more profound?” - Charles Baudelaire, 1859  Baudelaire emphasises here how the portrait is a very simple thing: a picture of a face but can be so powerful depending on the techniques used. Throughout this lecture many different portraits are given as examples, from early magazine covers with a basic look, right to the very complex as digital imaging manipulation is introduced, including a dark skinned queen from Tibor Kalman's " what if " series, 1993. “Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of “posing” . I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image.” - Roland Barthes, 1981  Here Barthes hints at how, even without digital manipulation, taking someones portrait alone changes them as a person as they are often aware their photo is being taken and they begin to pose, stiffening u

"The ideas ruins evoke in me are grand. Everything comes to nothing, everything perishes, everything passes, only the world remains, only time endures."  - Denis Diderot, Salon (1767)  The scenery of ruins has been present within art, poetry and literature since as early as the 16th Century, but modern day ruins in the form of abandoned buildings have significantly less history and architectural beauty. Urban decay - or the idea of the ruin - appeals to the imagination. It raises questions, triggers memories and emotions, and makes the area more interesting. Despite "urban decay" being somewhat an overused phrase and quite cliché in some respects, it is in fact really fascinating, and something worth giving closer attention. "The exploration of man-made structures, usually abandoned ruins or not usually seen components of the man-made environment. Photography and historical interest/ documentation are heavily featured in the hobby and, although i

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…" - William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984  The word ‘cyberspace’ was coined by writer William Gibson in his 1982 sci-fi short story ‘Burning Chrome’, and came into popular usage when it was used by him in his 1984 book "Neuromancer", and it has been said that it was only because of it that "cyberspace" became the widely-used term for the world wide web in the 1990s. In this book, which is said to be an epitome of the ‘cyberpunk’ genre of literature, Gibson paints a picture of cyberspace as a frightening, dystopian world. Cyberspace seems to teeter on the verge be

"Surrealism. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation."  - André Breton, from The Surrealist Manifesto, 1924  André Breton Surrealism is an artistic movement from the early 1900s. Despite being rooted in the early 20th century, it is a movement which still has a huge influence on visual art and culture to this day. Andre Breton (pictured above) is widely regarded as the founder of surrealism, having written an entire manifesto on the subject in 1924. With this manifesto, Breton aimed to show how surrealism could be applied to art, poetry, literature, as well as to any circumstance of life. Surrealism is more than just artistic, although the likes of Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Elliott Earls may spring to mind... The cultural movement of surre

"Rave culture brought about an almost universal graphic language, which in the decades since its first incarnation has become inextricably bound to its origins, yet transcendent of them" - Emily Gosling, from What Rave Culture is Teaching Modern Graphic Designers Rave Flyer from Chelsea Louise Berlin’s book: Rave Art Rave culture was of course built around electronic music, often made through improvisations with both the existing and emerging technologies of the day. It was exemplified by its unbound creativity and it's own new aesthetic. This aesthetic has had an incredible influence on graphic design, as Emily Gosling explores in her essay; "Rave posters of the 1980s and 90s demonstrated a joyful disregard for convention as did anti-design tropes for punk in previous decades... Type was brash and bold, colours a retina-burning neon, and imagery—like the sounds and samples pervading the scene—delinquently cut and pasted together." The posters from