Juan Orrantia
Quite often photographers take photographs of different communities as a way of documenting people who may of migrated from one place to another. This may be in the form of documentary photography or if a photography be in interested in the way in which a group of people may navigate from one place to another in terms of migration. The reasons for this mass movement may be a cultural interest. Quite often the photographer, or person documenting this may be an outsider looking in and the perspective can be just that, of an outsider, or it could be the case that the person documenting cold be completely immersed in the culture and understanding of that culture and the visual language present within that culture that their documentation becomes what may be termed as 'documentary truth'. The visual language is sensitive to the culture and it has been documented in a sensitive manner. Juan Orrantia is Colombian artist now based in South Africa. His interests are anthropology and representation. He became interested in visual language and photography and is keen to document what is around him. He has spent a long time in South Africa.
, before Watch this interesting interview with Juan Orrantia and his publisher. He talks about his practice of photography and responding to a question. He describes his experience of taking a series of photographs and changing the way in which he 'looks' at photographs and the way in which he was taught to 'look at photographs. The way in which he thinks about his photography in terms of metaphors is interesting. He thinks about migration, about being an outsider initially moving before feeling as though he was fully immersed into the culture until he felt that he was photographing from a place rather than photographing a place as an outsider. His practice has been an interesting journey of discovery.
The book
The images
- Watch the short flip through of the images in the book again.
- View some of these images from the book and choose one of the images above to write about.
- Write some words around the image to describe it. You may choose single words or sentences.
- What kind of a photographer do you think that he is judging by these images.
- What do you think his main themes were?
- What was he trying to capture?
- When you view these images what sense do you gain from his surroundings?
- If you were to write a paragraph about these images how would you describe them?
- Do these images tell you anything about the place in which they were made? If so what do they reveal?
- When you view the image what is your overall sense or feeling?
Article Task
juan_orrantia | |
File Size: | 500 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Photographic Task
- Write 20 words that describe your photographic practice. Think about words that describe the photographs that you like to take.
- Carry these words around with you and think about them. Look at them periodically and try and think about what these words mean to you. Be honest.
- Begin to take a series of photographs related to these words.
- Think about how the relation to text and image happens. It may not be as obvious as you think as the words could conjure up feelings or memories that are personal to you. How do these words relate to a photographic or visual image?
- Present a series of images. In order to approach this task you should have a series of at least 20 images.
- Carefully choose a selection of just 12 images and print them as a contact sheet.
- Analyse the images carefully annotating the reasons why you took the image what it meant. (What was the context or idea)
- When you are happy with the final selection, try to place them in an order. Do some images work well as a diptych (two images together) or do they work better as single images.