Pictus Interruptus.
I was introduced to 'Pictus Interruptus' when given the task of using an object to obscure an image via adjusting the focus of a subject whilst holding the object directly in front of the lens. As a class we were all given an object, I got a spanner with hexagons on each end and then we were sent outside to experiment with the idea of creatively incorporating our objects with the photo subject. I tried holding the spanner right in front on the camera, the lens fully zoomed in and switching focus between through the hexagon with the spanner blurred and the spanner itself so that the subject in the background was blurred. This made me think in a more pragmatic manner, scouring to find interesting subject matters that I could do a 'through the eye of needle' effect, choosing subjects such as a traffic light, a mannequin, leaves, a framed photograph of a past student and etc. When I focussed on the subject through the spanner, I found that it has an effect of redirecting the eye to the centre and anything outside of the spanner is no longer relevant, I think naturally when something is circled or put into a tight space; it seems more important, being forced to look through the spanner's prospective.
Vice versa, whenever the spanner was in focus and the background was not, it creates curiosity and some levels of frustration as you cant help but wonder what is behind the spanner? Or, why focus on this rather than the background? I find this an interesting concept as this could be used as a tool to capture images that makes the viewer question what they're really supposed to be looking at and could also make for an interesting series of images that may tell a story. The slideshow below shows the images I took for this task: |
Ray K. MetzkerMetzker was a photographer born in the 1930's in Milwaukee and dedicated 5 decades to his photography career with passion. He studied at the Institute of Design Chicago, which was later re-owned into the 'New Bauhaus' where he stayed from 1956-1959. Throughout his career, Metzker's work developed and changed from his location, for example; Chicago 1956-1959. This was of course during his studies at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where his work was high contrast black & white images taken all around Chicago and captured mostly people in the business district . The shadows casted add to the contrast of the photos whilst sometimes creating unique compositions where figures become elongated or tactical alignment of shadows to frame the image. Depicting the city's buildings with refined angles.
After graduating from his degree in 1959, Metzker then travelled through Europe capturing photos from a dozen different countries. His main focus in Europe weren't popular landmarks but rather urban settings with the main focus on subject matters such as secluded pedestrians crossing a road. The idea of capturing urban settings helps single in on more localised buildings and people, carrying about their lives, which Metzker could then use his eye to create a scene with morphed figures, elongated by light and shadow - creating a different through juxtaposition. In 1962, he moved to Philadelphia and his focus shift to more of the urban setting, such as an empty street with a lone traffic light merged with the side of a building taken from an angle. The difference between this period and his work in Europe, Metzker altered the view to be more subjective by using a double frame to combine two images that don't necessarily match but is almost impossible to see the seam between the two as they are so well combined that most of time it can't be pointed out. Therefore, creating a fictional world. |
In 1962 Metzker created 'Nude Composites' which is a roll of film taken of nude figures in Black & White double exposure. Metzker considered this piece as a singular work made up of a full roll of film. 'Nude Composites' is very abstract, showing off some enlarged areas of the figures that are hard to make out and then wider angles that the figures can be made out.
Finally, from 1976-1981 leads up to when Metzker created his 'Pictus Interruptus' series. In the photos he took, he really pushed a subjective view onto each composition. In these images, he creates a bizarre dynamic using his environment and picking out openings that allowed him to see shapes that make little sense. Often he would add his own elements too, such as paper cut outs held directly in front of the view of the camera to further obscure the images. The purpose of Pictus Interruptus is to make it almost impossible to gauge between what is reality and what's not, since the obscuring objects meld so well with the environment. An audio clip that I think explains the concept very well states, "The disjunctive quality of the objective gaze, a view broken by an object in the foreground of a photograph was highly unusual. Creating unsettling images." (source 'The J. Paul Getty Museum' website from the article 'Ray K. Metzker's Photographic Journey'). |
Adrian Diubaldo |
Someone else who uses pictus interruptus is Diubaldo. There isn't much on him but this series of work he has produced was taken using glass bottles/jars to distort the images. Morphing the landscapes and subjects, creates an augmented reality, the glass allows all the same colours to remain but the world is bent and swirled leaving the viewer to wonder what the are looking at .
I think compared to Metzker's work, Diubaldo uses a consistent physical object to morph his surrounding, whereas Metzker's work relies on finding different angles to catch a glimpse of an abstract point of view. |
Examples of Diubaldo's Photos.
Akihiko MiyoshiYet another example of a photographer that uses Pictus Interruptus is Miyoshi. His photos are most of himself in the reflection of a mirror, reflecting himself and his camera but with different elements obscuring the view so that you can't see his face (bar the self portrait on the right). Sometimes this will be physical materials or editorially. Examples of this would be sticky notes, paint and even grease, in some images the materials will outline his body leaving a silhouette and others haphazardly spread across the mirror.
The point of Miyoshi's portraits is to take the fundamentals of photography; capturing a subject to convey a point of view , then obscuring this and blocking out the subject intentionally. I really like this take as he does the opposite of what is traditional in photography and made a new form of photo, creatively disruptively his images. |