JR Final Year Photography

“Herbert Bayer was one of the leading figures in the Bauhaus movement in Germany and was throughout his career a highly influential graphic designer and artist.

Bayer began to experiment with photography while he was a master at the Bauhaus school in Dessau. He produced some straight photographs, highlighting the abstract structures and sculptural qualities of things, but was never interested in the technical side of photography and so his exploration of straight photography was limited.”

(http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/6658)

Bayer’s use of photomontage predominantly features hands and eyes, and this photograph really represents the feeling of paranoia. There is always someone watching us, that fear that you look different from everybody else. This reflects on my own personal opinion, and these ideals of alienation and isolation fit in well with Kafka’s The Zurau Aphorisms.

The prominent use of eyes in his photographs come from Bayer’s thoughts that eyes are the window of the human soul. Each of one us sees the same thing differently depending our own personal experiences and reflections on the world around us. Bayer’s photographic work has made me think about the connotation that eyes have and how I can use them to portray my personal reflections of Kafka’s work in a aesthetically surreal way.