What do you think of Blair?

This question will form part of my primary research, providing me with an indication of the public's views about Tony Blair, and possibly how he's affected them.

Thomas Hughes:

My image of Tony Blair is of a man who promised us education, education, education. Then re-introduced tuiton fees. A man caved into pressure form the U.S. and single handedly decided to take the U.K to war with not a care in the world for what the british public thought.

Bobby Hatton:

To me Tony Blair is a warmongering villain, every thing he says feels untrustworthy. He's a money grabbing man that would do anything for money

Lana Johnson:

Tony Blair was renowned for his ability to speak in public and confidence when addressing large audiences. He was very confident so therefore persuasive. He had an ability to sugar coat any situation. though sounded very fake at times. You can never trust a politicians, there ways of answering a question with a question is so annoying

Rob Jameson:

Honestly... I know pretty much nothing about him, so I can't really have an opinion but I would say hes probably a bit of a fool, due to being a politician.

Millie Botterell:

Tony Blair, having been Prime Minister for most of our youth, played a very big part in my political awareness as a child i suppose, as up until about secondary school i'm pretty sure i thought he always had and always would run the country, abit like the royal family. And although i've never been a particularly big fan of his awkward nature and funny voice, he didn't make me hate the Labour party too much, so i guess he did a relatively good job. I'm a Quaker so pacifism is a very important issue to me, the Iraq invasion led by Blair was for me a political atrocity, at that point in time i wasn't Blair's biggest fan, but again in conjunction with other Labour Party efforts i think he managed the country well. To be honest I'm pretty sure that i'm only partial to Labour because i think Conservative policy is ignorant, small minded and unproductive to the welfare of the country and it's less wealthy occupants.

Rachel Nelson:

He just happened to be prime minister when we were growing up and when you're young you just assume that the best guy for the job was picked.

Katie Payne:

Okie, so Tony Blair was in power for well most of my life that I have known what politics is. I suppose as my mum and dad have always told me how terrible the country got under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair in my household has always been seen as a good man. The war in Iraq, I say they needed to go in so I have no problem with Tony Blair in that sense. I do suppose like all children we look up to our parents and we think what they say goes and is correct so with my parents having no issue with Britain going to war I haven’t. Lets be honest, I think the Western World would have witnessed many more events such as 9/11 if we hadn’t gone into Iraq, just my personal opinion. I felt that Tony Blair was always portrayed as a happy person. As he represented Sedgefield in the local votes, he has always been associated with the North East. Therefore, like anything you always like people associated with where you come from. Furthermore, I have witnessed myself the impact of the Government on the place I live. And, although proberly not his fault, Gordon Brown to me was seen as the weak man who ruined our country, I feel Cameron is just someone who likes to say he is doing good…really he is looking out for number 1 and the upper class. So really…in my eyes out of these three men, Tony Blair is the good man, the happy one, the real man, genuine, who represented the real people of Britain

Johnathan Wilkinson:

He gets unfair treatment I think, the good friday agreement was obviously great and he introduced some other good stuff, it just got ruined by both the wars and trying to enforce national ID cards.

Alison Jackson: Images

Alison Jackson produces incredibly voyeuristic satiristic photos that portray the imagined secret lives of the rich and famous, through the pre-arranged nature of the images, always including celebrity doubles as replacements for the real stars, prompting us to question at first, is this really what Diana's doing? Jackson taps in to our curiosity towards the celebrity status, opening us up to a world some might desire to see what some are like behind closed doors, often involving embarrassing acts that would otherwise devastate the subject be it shown in a media situation.

Alison's photos are often shot as I said, in a voyeuristic fashion, but use the idea of the peeping tom and the privacy invading paparazzi as a frame for each image. This kind of stretching of the truth and make believe is the opposite to that I desire in my own work, but this research encapsulates the basic view of the audience, to imagine someone not based on who they are but what we want them to be.

Tony Blair himself has been the target of much of Jackson's work (often also including viral videos), along with these images, the sort you might find in The Sun or Hello! magazine. It may seem that Jackson enlarges the idea of ridiculing (maybe not intentionally), but in doing so we see these photos much in the same way we might watch a Spitting Image sketch (see previous blog post) or read a political cartoon in The Guardian.

 

The above scene is a nod to Brokeback Mountain and highlights what we'd like to imagine to be a very close relationship between Blair and Bush, to the extent that they are romantically engaged. The rope joining them screams as a metaphor for this, as the over exposure of the photo gives it a real amateur feel that adds to the authenticity of it being covert.

Another scene, similiar to the other but highlighting more blatant sexual innuendos. These photos are almost physical ennactments of the cartoons and characatures that we see, feeding this strange idea that we have about blur and making it a photographic reality.

This is what

http://www.alisonjackson.com/photos.html

Alison Jackson Interview

An insightful interview in to the mind of Alison Jackson, the fine art
photographer who creates parodies of the rich and famous.

Tony Blair - Alison Jackson's fake viral videos

A brilliant joke at Tony Blair and his choice of betting on the next
prime minister. I find this entertaining but I'll be reacting to it in my
own work by creating the anti-caricature.

Gerald Scarfe on Blair

Just like Rowson, Gerald Scarfe, one of Britain's most well known of political satirists and cartoonists, has produced a wealth of Blair themed illustrators, displaying him as a big eared bigoted lunatic and depicting him in a crude fashion. This work infuriates me in a way, I simply don't understand the reason behind this work, why we as readers of the Guardian and the Independant, demand to see cartoons. Politicians, and especially world leaders, are not for our pathetic entertainment and instead have serious and important responsibilities over our country. They're simply not here to be mocked (only in good reason?). All this is a continuation of the Spitting Image example, which forces out old fashioned and typically British views on the people above us. I could get overly passionate about this but I'll refrain.

Anyway, here's Scarfe's work:

Martin Rowson's Blair

Publication illustrator and political cartoonist Martin Rowson produces work which my final work should become the polar opposite of, and completely against. I'am including examples of this type of work to identify exactly what I'am working against and the audience that I'am attempting to positively influence.

December 8 2003: Tony Blair's greatest admirers are so paranoid about Gordon Brown that they sometimes fall into the mindset of the arch conspirator Metternich.

December 14 2003: Triumphant Americans declare: 'We got him!'

March 22 2004: Salim Lone: Iraq is on a knife edge. The US must back down on the UN role or risk 

escalation of the conflict.

January 5 2004: An unrepentant Tony Blair returned to the political fray yesterday with a flying visit to assure British troops in Basra that their work in Iraq is "a noble and good cause" for which the whole world will one day thank them. 

February 9: The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, weighed into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction yesterday when he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support for war. 

December 1 2003: Some journalistic pundits may have declared Tony Blair mad, but it is not necessarily so, according to a leading psychiatrist. 

March 1 2004: Former cabinet minister goes public with letter of rebuke from most senior mandarin.

February 19: Tony Blair's ambition to position Britain as an equal partner with France and Germany at the heart of an expanded Europe was publicly rebuffed last night.

Tony Blair Farewell Speech 2007

Tony Blair's Victory Speech 1997

Tony Blair / Simon Mayo

I have also found recordings of a September 2010 radio
interview between Blair and Mayo which discusses in a more
personal light his experience as Prime Minister. I have found
a lot of video resources from the period of Blair releasing his
memoirs "A Journey" - which I have mentioned in a previous
blog post about reading.

Tony Blair / Andrew Marr

Part 1 of 4 from an hour long Andrew Marr interview that provides
a look in to Blair's role as P.M and the events that spanned his 10
years at number 10, what he's been doing for the last three years.
Andrew Marr acts as a good interviewer who eases out a lot of
truths from Blair now that he's stepped out of his role, which gives
me insight in to how I can develop ideas in response to this
research, previous forms of research and where to take it in the
future.

Wikipedia sourcing

Although it's not an entirely reliable and trustworthy source for secondary research, I'am using it as a platform to learn about Tony Blair and his role as prime minister from 1997 to 2007.


"Tony Blair is acknowledged by most to be a highly skilful media performer who comes over as charismatic, informal, and articulate."


"The 43-year old Blair became the youngest person to become Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812, at the age of 42."


Here's a fact about his memoirs: "The book was published on 1 September and within hours of its launch had become the fastest-selling autobiography of all time." Astonishing.

Tony Blair: A Journey

I plan to get hold of this book and at least try to read it all. It'll hopefully be a truthful insight in to Blair's life in his own words.

"I've really enjoyed writing A Journey. I set out to write a book which describes the human as much as the political dimensions of life as prime minister. Though a memoir is by its very nature retrospective, the book is also an attempt to inform and shape current and future thinking, as much as an account of the past. However, most of all I hope readers will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it".

Although I've never known and understood Tony (as he should probably be referred in the most human respect), I have grown up (from '97 to '07) as a child with him as my prime minister, so it's about time I did understand him and for me this is a prime opportunity. The man for me is shrouded in intrigue and things I don't know about.

Blair: Painted portraits

Blair

After my critique I've decided I will place my focus for the brief on Tony Blair. My decision was based on Blair's controversy and our assumption of him as a villain. I want this to be a journey of an in depth understanding of Tony Blair in his past, his role as Prime Minister, the backlash of the war in the middle east, his private life and his wife's role. I want to answer the question, who is Tony Blair?

Newspaper Analysis

Ed Balls' expression emulates a photographic charicature of himself, and introduces the audience to a very judgemental and stereotypically "British" way of seeing things. 

The positioning of the two photos that a conversation almost emerges between David Cameron and Colonel Gaddafi. There is a pantomime emerging from this newspaper section, as Gaddaffi plays the villain in the piece, Cameron is seen as a bumbling, struggling man fumbling around for a way to tackle the situation and benefit.

This article title offers up a good example of political cartoon. I must reinforce the fact that I'am not a fan of political cartoons and this is part of the context of my brief.

Change...

I'am starting to find now that my interest in celebrity culture is coming through, as references I seem to be drawing on images more and more of those that aren't known as political figures. Maybe this could provoke a change in my brief? I'am not entirely sure if it will, maybe this confirms I need to stick more solidly to the subject matter of political people and MPs instead of the actor or musician. What I need to do now through my research is find first hand evidence of newspapers actually taking control of a politician's image. This could be done through the use of headlines or the tactical decision to use certain photos that reflect the person in a certain manner. I should also find appropriate news stories to accompany these. I could also do with finding existing examples of political cartoons in print (as this is the media I will be working in for this brief).

Joe Simpson

"Joe works primarily in oil paint to create realistic images that utilise the conventions of cinematography to present ‘staged’, fictitious scenes where time has been stopped and extended.  These frozen moments are deliberately ambiguous, inviting the viewer to inject their own emotions, motivations and narrative context into the scene, thereby avoiding limiting interpretation."

Spitting Image

The distortions of political figures are quite scary to look back on, as the program is something I'am too young to have any memory of. I disagree with the elevation of political status becoming almost celebrity in today, with last year's first broadcast of a "live election", involving the provoked bickering of Clegg, Brown and Cameron becoming a continuation of Spitting Image, even though it stopped production in 1996. By pitting three opposing party leaders together in one room, we as an audience have been waiting, slamming our cutlery on the table and bating for an outbreak of conflict and fistycuffs. I suppose from my perspective this brings to light a new form of entertainment for the dead-eyed and dazed Briton to gawp over, because it's funny. We don't care about the end result, we just want to see who comes out worst off, that's the primal way or brains are hard-wired to seek entertainment, with crave it like a moth to the flame. Even the newsreader is a celebrity, or just take a look at Piers Morgan.
      We've grown in to a vegetated state of remix culture and addicts desiring the finest, the best, the funniest, the biggest and the brightest. I think this contributes to why we laugh in the face of politicians. How can we expect any type of progress as a country when we can't stop pointing and laughing at  "poshos" in suits with red briefcases in front of Number 10?
       The TV is the teacher and the Newspaper a child's fairytale. We revert to a childs mind when informed, as it is the boldness of our reaction to current affairs we revel in. Laugh at the dunce and cry at the catastrophe. That's entertainment.
       We are offered a narration that we presume to be fact over the footage that is strategically edited outside of live transmission. See what they want you to see.

The BBC evidence this on an article availabe online,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8652354.stm.
       
"It's hard to draw general conclusions at the end of such a detailed and closely fought three-part contest - particularly so close to polling day. The battle over bankers and their bonuses included some of the sharpest exchanges during the first half. All three clearly feel that this is an area where there is still lots of anger out there, and bucket-loads of potential votes. But the dividing lines were hazy.
Not so during the next phase of the clash - when things sparked to life during the row over inheritance tax and tax credits. Here we saw Gordon Brown make another attempt to sign the Lib Dems up for a joint attack on the Tories. Was this Labour's strategy during this final debate? To give those watching a clear idea of the common ground that could exist between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown if there's an inconclusive result at the end of next week."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8621119.stm

For me, Spitting Image is where this begins, the humiliation of both national and international govenrment, and even the Royal Family.

Brief and Context

Brief: Challenge and change the often biased and assumed public opinion and perceptions of political leaders and figures through portraiture.

Context: The issue I wish to tackle are the preconceptions and misjudgements we gain from interpreting articles and headlines online and in print, thus forming personal opinions that may be otherwise unjustified and biased towards the romantic idea of the politician being imagined as a "fool".

Roland Barthes: Mythologies - "Photography and Electoral Appeal".

I've found this short chapter of Roland Barthe's book very relevant to the brief I have set myself. The chapter focuses on the photographic and commercial image of a political candidate, dissecting this image.

"Some candidates for Parliament adorn their electoral prospectus with a portrait. This presupposes that photography has a power to convert which must be analysed."

In my project I will be working outside the medium of photography, as I don't class this as a medium I particular am immersed and entirely enthusiastic about.

Tavis Coburn

Berto Martinez

Berto is an illustrator whose wide range of interest goes from interior; life style; fashion to social environment issues from the view point of a photographer. 

The Cure

Amy Winehouse

Franz Ferdinand

Hurts

La Roux

Obama and McCain

I adore these illustrations, the use of white space is brilliant and instead of appearing context less they work well because there is no sign of any figures of faces being distort, as they're purposefully photo real. I will look in to the use of watercolour, amongst other mediums.