Sophie Calle: The Hotel

The Hotel (L'Hotel) is a series of images produced in 1981 by French photographer and conceptual artist, Sophie Calle. Calle was hired to work as a chambermaid at a hotel in Venice, which allowed to her to explore/investigate the writings and objects of the guests.

The series of photographs on the left is from The Hotel. It shows eight separate images, and I am presuming that they were all taken in the same room (there was little information available about them, other than what the Hotel series was about).

On their own, and I feel that this would be true if each photo was presented separately, these are quite unremarkable images. The objects are ordinary, every-day ones, such as clothing left on a bed, newspapers, rubbish in a bin, etc. However, when all of these are placed in sequence, they start to create a story. I find myself wondering about the person [or persons] who left the items there; what were they doing, why are they staying in a hotel, how long for, etc. It is this which makes me think the photos work, and what makes me really like them.

Shooting at home (again).

This next contact sheet shows a few images that I again shot at home, which were taken about a week ago (or thereabouts). On the advice of tutor I took a few photos of the money bank "in context", as well as taking a few more, the ideas for which popped into my bed prior to shooting.

I do not think that the lighting or the white balance is particularly brilliant in the first few, but I am nevertheless quite pleased with what I achieved here.

Placing a few coins from inside the money bank at the side of it was one of the ideas I had, and although I do think this has worked well, I think it would look better if the coins were in focus, as I do not think some of them here are.

I also took two photographs of me putting a coin into the money box, as though I was trying to save whatever little bit of money that I could find. This again was another idea that I came up with prior to shooting. I thought it would look good, and could potentially be used as a final image. I again quite like these two images, but I found it somewhat difficult to put the coin into the box, hold the camera and take a photo all at the same time, so both images look slightly out of focus. I am going to try doing this again, and will hopefully have more control over the camera!

Other photos I took here were of several little pots I have in my room. I tend to accumulate a lot of change [of the bronze type, sadly], which I just tend to chuck in whatever I can find; the pots shown here are two such things. I think these could be interpreted as keeping money wherever possible, no matter how small.

The last few photos on this contact sheet are of the job search page(s) in last week's edition of the Advertiser. When I think of being poor/having little or no money, I almost immediately think of looking for a job, as for me the two things go hand in hand. I used the modelling lamp mentioned in the previous post to light these photographs. I think these work well, but would look better if I had drawn a ring round some of the adverts.

Research, part two.

This contact sheet is a continuation from the previous one, which I thought I would upload as well. The photos here were shot at the same time as the ones on the previous one were.

Most of the photos on this contact sheet are macro photos of the pennies that I had arranged in piles, taken with the 70-300mm lens, as before. As with the previous contact sheet/photos, what I like here is the detail that I have been able to capture. Although this is not definitely what I was trying to capture when I took these photos, I think it looks good.

Research Part 1: shooting at home.

This contact sheet shows images that I shot at home, on the 7th of May, as part of this narrative brief. I wanted to shoot images that would in some way show what my idea for this brief is; i.e. lack of money/being poor.

My set-up here was very simple. To get the white background I got a book that I had used for a previous brief, and simply opened it to a blank page and used this. These photos were shot in my bedroom, where the lighting is less than brilliant, even when it is nice outside. So, for lighting here I used a modelling lamp that belongs to my dad, which gives off a natural daylight effect. I have used that lamp before when taking photos, and I liked the effect it created (hence why I decided to use it here).

The first few photos on the contact sheet are of a money bank that I have owned for a while now (which, as you can see, is not a "piggy bank" as such). One of the things which comes to mind for me when I think of money, or in this case not having money, is the piggy bank, often smashed with a hammer as a somewhat desperate way of looking for a little bit of change. I did not want to break this money bank, so I just took a few quick photos of it. I quite like the second one, IMG_1521; I like how the head is in focus with the body of the money bank being out of focus. On the whole though, I do not think that these few images are anything too special. For some of them I attached a post-it note with "IOU" written on it, as the IOU is another thing that springs to mind for me when I think of money. I don't particularly like the way this post-it looks here. It looks awkward in the way it's attached to the money bank. I think this idea would probably work better if it was an IOU in a pile of pennies, but I did not think to do anything like this at the time.

The rest of the photographs on this contact sheet are of pennies that I took out of the money bank. With the first two photographs of this section I simply left the pennies as they were when I took them out of the money bank, i.e. not organised in any kind of way. I like these. To me these photos look as though someone has emptied their piggy bank out, trying to find whatever little bit of change possible. This is what I was trying to achieve here, so I am pleased with these. For the rest of the photos on this contact sheet I arranged the pennies into piles, and then photographed them; some of the photos were taken with my 50mm lens on the camera, and some were taken with my 70-300mm lens in macro mode. I am pleased with all of these photos, too. I like how the first few [the ones which were taken with the 50mm lens] have a shallow depth of field, and I like how I have captured the detail of the pennies in the later photos - the ones which were taken with the 70-300mm lens.