POLITICAL PHOTOGRAPHY - Cold War Steve
Cold War Steve is a British artist and satirist. He displays grim, dystopian locations in Britain populated by British media figures, politicians, celebrities, etc. Phil Mitchell is consistent in his work as he looks in disgust at the subjects of the photos. His work has been described as being the perfect encapsulation of "Brexit Britain"
Cold War Steve (Christopher Spencer) worked a large portion of his life in extremely mundane and dull working class jobs which led to a serious depression in his life. Upon recovery of the result of this depression, Spencer began making these collages on his phone on his daily commute. I believe this explains a lot about why Christopher makes these collages, because he has been through the working class system for years and his collages are him fighting against the people that he feels put him in this system.
His use of appropriation of political figures really interests me as I like the comedic nature about the photos such as the consistent Phil Mitchell in each of his works. You could argue Phil's disgust at each of the scenes could represent how Spencer feels about the figures in the photo or how the figures have been represented in the collage.
I particularly like the bottom left photo as I believe it gets its message across most obviously as we can see the politicians gathered in an abandoned assembly hall and they are represented as unorganised, unprofessional and stupid.
I was also immediately drawn to this work as my Dad has done work very similar to this and I have seen this kind of work many times before.
GENDER & SOCIETY - SHIKEITH
Shikeith is a visual artist born in Philadelphia and is now based in Pittsburgh. His work consists of communicating to an audience how gender and race stereotypes can effect people in different ways. Shikeith's work breaks gender and race boundaries as he portrays the people he photographs as emotional or vulnerable. He also often uses grayscale to make the viewer focus more on the raw emotion or meaning in the photo rather than get distracted by the colour.
DIGITAL CULTURE - ALAN BUTLER
Alan Butler's photography project "Down and Out in Los Santos" is a work focusing on the poverty ridden areas in Los Santos in GTA which is a video-game adaptation of the city of Los Angeles. This project interests me as I like how it portrays struggle and poverty in a unique and interesting way. I also find it interesting the way a simulation replicates real life poverty and struggle. I will most likely be inspiring my work from this as I have done work similar to this.
