During lockdown, learning different ways of being creative is especially important to me, and so when I saw dotdotart had nominated me for her Tracey Emin themed Insta gallery this time around, I wanted to take myself out of that comfortable photography box that I am used to. This time using Photoshop as my main tool of creativity.
A little back story on Tracey Emin, is that she’s – in a nutshell – a jack of all trades, from self-portraits, to artistic experimentations with everyday objects, all the way to abstract sculptures. Her work has a minimal relation to my current study, looking at sexually provocative pieces of work, and is also, an autobiography of her own life and lived experiences.
Emin’s neon artistic displays were what influenced my imagery on this particular occasion. I remember seeing similar work in the Tate in 2018, and I am always completely mesmerised by the beauty of something so simple. It really does bring you in. I am a big fan of the pop of colour, with minimal detail. Not only this, but her choice of words throughout her practice is particularly striking, sometimes humorous, and also intriguing. Emin, in my eyes, really has no restrictions on what she says or does, which makes for a powerful, impacting body of work.
So I knew there was no way of being able to make sculpturistic light displays, so instead I needed to learn ways to do this on Photoshop. I firstly used some stock imagery to produce some practice displays, that would curate a simple neon light, similar to that you would see in a bar/pub, which I could them co-operate in to my own photographs.
So once I had learnt the logistics of being able to curate a realistic enough style, I then chose to experiment with the imagery. Starting with a photograph I had already take during lockdown, to see how I incorporate something in a busier image:
This, I felt did not look how I wanted it to, it didn’t have much of a realistic look to it. Very much a boring image with some text stuck on the top of it. This made me realise the image needed to be something new, and staged to produce the neon light effect with in it, which is why I photographed quite a plain area, adding a bit light here and there, making for an easier edit, and cleaner photograph.
Tyler Bishop-Harris 