What to add into the Pandora's box photoshoots

I had not listened to my audio book Mythos in a few weeks as the more I listened to it, the more confused i got as to which Ideas I should pursue for this project, however after decided to complete this project solely based on the story of Pandora’s Box, I thought I would start listening to it again, hoping at some point it would come up, well weirdly and luckily, it was the first thing that was mentioned when i started to listen again! Which seemed like a message from the Universe telling me to focus on this subject!

Anyway! I got some really useful information from Mr. Fry, which is great as i was starting to get worried about what I should involve into the photo!

According to the story, when the box was opened, the mutant children of both Nyx and Erebus were released, all sorts of evil flying shapes including

  • Geres - God of Old Age - Something old (Moldy food?)

  • Momus - God of Blame

  • Keres - God of Violdent death (Knife with fake blood)

  • Atë - God of Ruin, Mischief (Ash)

  • OIzys - God of Misery, anxiety and grief (sad face?)

  • Eris - God of Chaos, strife and Discord (Oil and water??)

  • Ponos - God of hardship and toil (Cotton, slavery??)

  • Limos - Goddess of starvation (no food, only moldy food)

  • Algos - God of mental and physical pain (medication)

  • Dolos - God of lies, cunning deception and trickery (money, power)

  • Neikea - Goddess of quarrels and feuds (Oil and water??)

  • Amphillogiai - Goddess of disputes and altercations (Oil and water??)

  • HYSMINAI - Spirits of fighting and combats (chess)

  • Phonoi - personifications of murder and killing (rope and knife with blood)

And finally, the last thing left in the jar was Elpis - spirit of hope (represented by a flower)

So above each spirit or god will represented by some form of object of idea as well as the Pandoras box opened with a flower inside.

Doctor who Influence.

Since I was about 10 years old, I have a been a HUGE Doctor Who fan, to the point where I really would not talk about much else and would know the script to the first 10 minutes of certain episodes. ANYWAY! On June 19, 2010, an episode called The Pandorica Opens was aired which was taken from the idea of Pandora’s box, the idea was to imprison the Doctor in the box as he was seen to be evil due to killing so many different species (even though he was doing it to save planets). I feel this may be where my first love for this story came from as at the age of 10 I had not really started to learn about Greek Mythology quite yet. So once again, Doctor Who is the reason behind me finding something so interesting. It helped e to find interest in so many things, especially History wise as I never learnt any English History as i came over the UK.

So this is the reason for my strong connection and fascination with Greek Mythology, but the Pandora’s box story in particular.

Asking people what they thought about the type of evil released from Pandora's box was.

Some of the answers I got were really funny, it is nice to know that people still have a sense of humour! Although some of them are very true and very sad.

And my all time favorite….

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Some of these will be quite helpful however other won’t be so much… Either way i got a few ideas of people’s thoughts and a good laugh!

New idea

I am hoping this will be my final idea!

They have evolved and changed a fair few times since starting this project, but I feel a bit more confident with this idea as I have more concrete ideas!

for this idea, I will be completely focused on Pandora’s box still, however there will be 2 frames, one which will consist of all the good things that happened before the box was opened and the other consisting of all the evils which were released into the world when the box was opened. As well as the zoetrope showing the box being opened without any other distractions in frame as as when she opened the box, she was not thinking of any of the consequences that could come with her actions.

Below is a quick sketch of my final display idea with the 2 prints on the wall and the zoetrope in front of them.

Baroque style Pandora's box ideas and sketch

Below is a messy sketch of what I am planning to do with the photo shoot, including where the lights will be and how I am planning on going ahead with slowly opening the box. As well as using different foods which will fingers crossed rot away in the following weeks

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Making the Wax wings

This was one of the processes we went through to try and make the wings,

  1. Melt the wax, I got some candles from Tiger to melt.

  2. Push the angel figure I have into the sand to make the shape of the wings

  3. Pour the wax into the wings shape

  4. Wait for it to cool down fully, left it over night.

  5. Remove from the sand, easily and very badly attempt to cut around the wing shape, but don’t break the wings the way that I did….

In other words a waste of time, but at least I tried it!

I also tried to cover some feathers in wax, which worked really well!

However, when it came to taking pictures of them, there was no way that i could put them which looked interested, and they also just would not melt… I felt very underwhelmed by the outcome.

My final attempt was to cover my little angel figurine in liquid latex to create a mold, so I painted on several layers of latex and it did create a good mold! However the wax melted the latex and it went everywhere… At this point, I decided to change this idea as it was stressing me out so much!!!!! I am so glad I am not doing it anymore!!

Cristina de Gennaro - Medusa

The series of images by Cristina de Gennaro named medusa Portraits is a very conceptual and modern day project which has taken some inspiration and ideas from the Greek mythology gorgon, Medusa. This project idea is one of the very reasons I am interested in the impact Greek mythology has on today’s culture. It has been around for thousands of years yet we still use it in our every day life to explore different topics or to relate to certain things.

This project is an exploration of femininity - this is the short extract which is written with the images.

The Medusa Portraits explore aspects of female aging and the association of the “feminine” in Western philosophy and culture to earth and decay, as well as its biological connections to birth and life. Referencing the Greek myth of Medusa, the portraits allude to the connections between female desire, female rage, and the physical body.

The series explores the aging “feminine” as non-binary to the “masculine” while still maintaining its connections to the biological and the physical: as linked to the earth, to life and death, order and disorder. My experience of aging is complex and filled with contradictions: age has brought with it not only knowledge and power, but also fragility and loss – and these portraits reflect both.

This feels like a very important project to be made and I feel that relating it to a topic which is known worldwide, really helps people to relate to it and to understand it. I have been very intrigued and have wanted to learn more about Medusa through this project and from I have learnt, she has a very sad and intense story. She is known as a gorgon, but she was raped by Poseidon and so Athena punished her but giving her a head full of snakes, for essentially no longer being a virgin. Very interesting story, but the idea of being prompted to research into her story more is exactly what I would like for people to feel when they look at my work. I would like for them to feel educated or for them to do further research into these topics.

Idea of rotting fruit

After being very unsuccessful with the wax wings and it causing me SO much stress and anxiety, I decided to scrap this idea and try another. My current idea is to take a photograph over the space of 2 weeks, having a baroque style still life of fruit and veg and other food products and then to slowly watch it rot over the time. Te idea is that Pandora’s box would be in the middle of the image and would slowly be opening and as it opens everything around it slowly turns bad. I feel this idea is so much more exciting and would work well with my idea of the animation in the Zoetrope.

The only issue with this idea, is I do not have a lot of time, there are only 3 weeks until Bargehouse and this needs to be ready by then. Another issue is where I would set up this installation, and it would attract flies so it will need to be someone nobody really goes and where I can easily get rid of any insects afterwards.Another reason it would need to be where nobody goes is because within the 2 weeks I am shooting, the setup cannot move even slightly, including the lighting which would need to be the exact same throughout the time period.

The plan is that I will take a shot 3 times a day for the 2 weeks until everything has rotted away.

I feel there are a lot of flaws with this idea and the time frame that I have. But I really love the idea . So if for whatever reason I am unable to complete this idea, I will complete a similar idea, but I will also try to complete this specific idea another time.

The stress of the wax wings

These wax wings have taken the bloody life out of me, just the thought of them has stressed me out so much! After trying so many different methods of how to present them, I have decided I am not going to do this anymore. I am going to change my idea ever so slightly and focus primarily on Pandora’s box, but make it a much more exciting and Baroque style photo shoot. Post to come about my plans around this and how I am going to execute this. I do not have long to make this so it is a race against time, but I will do it and I know I will! I feel a lot more motivated and inspired by this idea than any of the others. I am hoping these coming weeks will be a hell of a lot more productive than the last few months.

Ori Gersht

I believe that Ori’s work is going to be very useful to me in my practice, I have always been very interested in science and mathematics and sort of wish I had gone into something to do with these subjects, however I had a very rough time during my A-level Maths and only got a D which brought me down a fair amount both physically and mentally. But, from watching Ori’s presentation on his work and how he is inspired by such amazing people of these types of fields, it has made me realize that I can, if I wanted, bring these subjects into my photography. I really do think his talk is going to change my outlook on photography and help me realize that I can do literally anything with this subject,.

Ori’s work is very highly influenced by different classical paintings and different era’s of art and science. He began his presentation by referring to Juan Sanchez Cotan’s work, a Spanish painter, he was interested in creating an equilibrium out of this concrete structure and so Ori wanted to recreate this idea, he stated that he took the liberty to change some of the objects used, I found this quite funny, not too sure why, from this piece of work, he create a short film and honestly, I found it to be so beautiful and though provoking. I feel very connected to this work, especially with this project and how it relates to the still lives from this era, but also using a video as a form of showing the still lives in movement, this is almost exactly what i am doing, except in my case, each frame is still a still life, however when put together and moved quickly it will create a short animation, so the content of the frames are not moving, however the physical image will be.

He seems to be very interested in symbolism and showing different intense emotions through his work; anger, love, brutality.

It is clear that he is strongly influenced by history, science and the movement of time. Through the talk, I could see that he puts a lot of thought into the concept of each painting and is really moved by each and every aspect.

He created a piece of work called ‘On reflection’ which was inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder and his 17th century paintings which are show below.

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Seeing his work made me realize just how much I can do with my own practice, and how I can bring so much meaning into each and every shot that I take, he has helped me to form meaning and a deeper understanding into my work and the images I have currently, but also how things do not have to be literal or straight forward, they can be a lot more complex and exciting which allows people to create their own visual concept of things.

Current ideas

Currently, my plans have not changed immensely, however after seeing how underwhelming the film of Pandora’s box was, I have decided to not create a film as part of the final piece, I may still create a flip book, however I am not entirely certain I will have the time or money.

My thought process at the moment is to have 2 different types of zoetrope with both the Pandora’s box (which I will shoot again) and the wings of Icarus melting frame by frame to create the animation. With 2 different A1/0 prints of the first frame and the last frame of each animation.

Dominic Davies Tableaux

At the beginning of second year, Dominic Davies came and did a talk to the uni about his work. I almost straight away fell in love with his practice, I found it to be so very interesting and alluring. He mostly spoke about his work where he focused on a man with an illness called Synesthesia ‘is a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses.’ (Healthline, 2020)
This sounded like a really tough illness to have, and a very difficult project to execute, however Dominic Davies created a, simply beautiful project from the situation. Using still lifes and trying to use the objects or foods in which the subject could taste within these frames. ‘He revealed that I tasted of ‘carrot cake with a slight essence of plastic’, My wife Floury is unsalted butter, my son Milo tastes of finger nails.’ (Davies, D. 2013)

Family Portrait - Dominic Davies

Family Portrait - Dominic Davies

Davies is one of my main inspirations for this project due to having chosen to create different still life images to symbolize Greek Mythology. For example, in my Athena study, I included an owl which represents wisdom, Olive oil as she was the bearer of the olive tree to the Greeks, Chess to show War and strategy and thyme to represent courage and bravery. I really admire the type of lighting he uses in his work and how he is not afraid of shadows which really inspired me to play around with shadows and reflections a bit.

The portrait itself seems rather odd without the context and is also seems a bit revolting, which is why Dominic Davies did so amazingly at this project, seeing these different foods within the frame almost sets off my sense of taste and allows me to almost taste all of these things together, and this is how I would imaging that the subject of this project feels like most days. So not only did he create a beautifully, well lit image, he created something which almost allows us to sense what the subjects senses.

I guess that by using animation in my project, I am sort of using the same concept, as I am showing the viewer what happened in these myths and almost what it would have been like to be there and see what would happen during the stories.

If it wasn’t for Davies, I do not think I would be so interested in Still life, but seeing just how much you can do with and how, if it is well done, it can be so symbolic of a situation or of a person.

Roast Beef. Beef – Sound of a leather saddle / or creak of a Tree . Yorkshire puddings – Church organ – Horseradish sauce –1960’s Police bell .Boiled green beans – A school blazer.

Roast Beef. Beef – Sound of a leather saddle / or creak of a Tree . Yorkshire puddings – Church organ – Horseradish sauce –1960’s Police bell .Boiled green beans – A school blazer.

Pandora's Box Shoot

This is a photo shoot I did to represent Pandora’s box, it took me so long to find a box which I thought would be good enough for this shoot, but when I came across this box in TKMaxx, I just had a feeling about it and I do really believe that it works quite nicely for the project. This shoot took me 2 whole days to produce and edit to create a stop motion video, and I actually hate the video so much, it is so underwhelming. I reversed the frames so that we can see it opening and closing, but getting the actual images was such a nightmare. To get the green in the smoke was so difficult, I had to play around with the lighting for a few hours before even getting close to anything I wanted or needed, eventually I managed to get the settings to an ok level where the green was quite prominent and the vapor was able to demonstrate the idea of nasty things coming out of the box. I am happy with the outcome of the images themselves as I worked so hard on the lighting and making sure the shots were exactly the same other than the movement of the box, however I do think I will do this shoot again and try to get more shots so that the video can be longer and consist of more frames.

Below is the first attempt I got where I was trying to get the green light, but due to the flash it was burning out any other colors from the vapor, eventually I figure it out as shown above, however I feel that I much prefer this animation as it seems a lot cleaner and longer than the above one, so maybe I will try and complete it again like the one below but have the green fro the one above. I feel the green is needed to show the idea of all the bad things coming out of the box into the world. I am considering having hands open the box but I am not too sure about this quite yet, I will experiment with it though.

Again, sorry about the watermark. If I am able too, I will try to remove it.

Chess Stop Motion film

This is the stop motion film with the chess, but as the background often changed during the photographing, I decided it wouldn’t be good enough to use as a part of my project, but as i said this is where I got the idea of sing stop motion, so it is very important. But not important enough to pay 40 pounds for a year subscription or for me to spend hours trying to understand Premier Pro just yet.

I have learnt a fair amount of making this film -

  1. When making a stop motion film, everything needs to stay in the exact same place, else the film can be distracting with the lights changing and the board moving and so on.

  2. The lights need to be in the same place at all times, no one sitting in front of them and no natural light coming in as this may change the final lighting.

  3. To make sure the subject is perfectly placed before starting

  4. Make sure everything is in shot and in focus, use a high aperture.

  5. Have a remote to take the photo as touching the camera can move it even slightly

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer known for his motion based studies. He became world famous after his large photograph of Yosemite Valley was made public. He began experimenting with motion in 1872 after he was hired to prove that during a horses trot, all four of it’s legs will be off the ground at a specific moment in time. At first, it was a struggle due to not having a fast shutter on his camera, he was then interrupted from his study due to being tried for the murder of his wife’s lover.

In 1877 he continued his research into motion photography where he created a fast shutter having an exposure time of of 2/1000 of a second which thoroughly helped him alongside side this study. He was widely criticized for his work as many people did not believe that it was possible for all four legs would be able to simultaneously be off the ground at the same time. To try and prove his work, he began giving lectures on animal locomotion which were illustrated using a Zoopraxiscope, a projection of images which moved very quickly rotating on a glass disc creating the illusion of moving image which Muybridge invented.

The image above is one of his studies showing a hose jumping over a hurdle, I find it so interesting as it seems quite advanced for this time period with the fast shutter speed and making moving image, but it is so attractive and striking. I also love the concept behind why he began these studies of stop motion, which was a fairly scientific reason having the prove and show that at a moment in time, all four of the horses legs were off the ground.

For this project, I am planning on making 2 types of zoetropes to show a short animation regarding 2 Greek mythology stories, so Muybridge has really helped me to see how it can be executed and put across.

Stories I am focusing on.

Icarus and his wings -

Even though Icarus was a minor character, ( although i am unsure if anyone is a minor character in Greek mythology), a lot of people seem to know his story which is one of the main reasons I would like to focus on him during this project. In brief, the part of his story which I will be focusing on is when Daedalus (his father known for being a great inventor) created some wings made from box wax and feathers, they were both imprisoned and so these wings were to allow Icarus freedom and a way out. he was given the strict instructions not to fly too close to the sun else the wings would melt and he would plunge to his death, sadly, he did not listen to these instructions and exactly that happened.

I would like to focus on the idea of these wings made from wax and the melting of them. This will be turned into an animation of the wings slowly melting. I will most likely add in some feathers as well to make it true to the story.

Pandora’s Box

After Prometheus had created man, he was told very strictly by Zeus to never give them the gift of fire, of course he ignored these rules and did it anyway. This caused Zeus to become very angry and so he came up with a master plan to get revenge. He asked Hephaestus to create a beautiful female who was coached and taught by a few of the gods/ goddesses including Athena. She was given the name Pandora. Zeus gave her a present which she was to never open, it was a Pithos (a Greek sort of jar) but many people know this to have a been a box, the words were lost in translation over the years. Her curiosity grew stronger and stringer until eventually she opened the box and released all forms of evil into the world. Meaning Zeus had had a successful revenge on mankind.

For this part of the project, I would like to have a box slowly opening with some sort of smoke coming out of the box.

I feel I need to focus on another story to make it 3 stories however I am currently unsure on what to focus on. I will come back to this.

New Plan

I was really struggling with creating different tableaux for different Gods, and I was struggling with choosing which Gods to use, as well not really liking the idea of separating 3,4 of them from the rest as I feel it did not necessarily add up as the majority of them were re-born together after Kronos regurgitated them….

I also did not feel that there was much of a WOW factor to them, although I have grown quite fond of my Athena photo-shoot.

I want to do something a little different which is a bit more interactive and fun for both the viewer and for me. After booking out a lighting kit to create different photos for the project and to try and figure out what I wanted to do, I decided to start taking photos of us playing a game of chess to see where it would lead, and I really liked the idea of using stop motion, this is when I looked up the idea of a Zoetrope which I have absolutely fallen in love with, it sounds fun and interesting, but also very challenging which I am sure will stress me out a bit later…. So I think instead of using 4 different Gods, I will look at Greek mythology stories which I am interested in and I will create stop motion animations using different forms of animation material, such as a flip book, a zoetrope, a film, etc… I believe that this will be a bit more intriguing than just prints of still lives, especially as Greek mythology is a very moving subject in the way that it has formed a large amount of society even today, We are highly influenced by their myths and stories and I believe that we will be for a long time to come. And so this is why I do not feel that still lives are doing this project any justice.

Trial Aphrodite shoot

This was a trial shoot with Aphrodite’s theme, which I turned into a stop motion, I hated this, I found it to be very boring and not as complex and interesting as any of the Athena photo shoots, once again the lighting was difficult to get right and so it is all over the place in this shoot. Due to the difficulty of this, I decided to not do Gods anymore as I am really struggling with trying to figure out what to do with Zeus’ and Poseidon photo shoots and I really do not like this one. I do however still like the idea of the stop motion film, but I really need to grasp the whole lighting techniques and making sure the frame does not move even a millimetre.

Chess Photo shoot

For this photo shoot, my friend and I played a game of chess and I took a shot for every move that we took, this was both fun and stressful as it was nice to play the game of chess, but difficult to focus on both taking the picture and making sure the lighting and all was the same as the other frames and playing the game. Unfortunately, the frames were not all the same which causes the film to be a bit wonky, but I do still really like the concept and this is where I decided that i wanted to have stop motion included in my project.

Also because, I love the idea of time and how it moves in a very linear position, but it also repeats itself, if time travel were possible, each frame in our lives could be replayed a countless amount of times and so I love to be able to play with this idea through photography. Greek mythology consists of stories which will most likely be told for many more years to come and they have been told for thousand of years prior to now, so I feel like the idea of time in this concept is very important. These stories have highly influenced society in many different ways throughout the year.