A group of photography students studying at Robert Gordon University’s (RGU) Gray’s School of Art have their first public exhibition on display in the city’s Belmont Filmhouse.
The BA Commercial Photography students were tasked with producing an image which was inspired by either ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, a film directed by Wes Anderson, or the cult classic ‘Bladerunner’ by Ridley Scott.
The students were given the opportunity to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel on the big screen at the Belmont Filmhouse and then had to relate their work to the idea of a metaphor from either film.
The exhibition, which is on display in the Belmont Filmhouse Café, will run until January 31 and all the students’ prints are available for purchase.
Student Ben Cairns said: “The brief of producing a single image as a visual metaphor was very open and as it was a single image it proved to be quite a different experience to our normal process of producing a series of images which need to tie together. As a result I felt there was a lot of scope creatively.
“I based my idea upon capturing a few key elements, the pastel colours that made up much of the palette of the sets within the film and the idea that the hotel the narrator stays in is a shadow of its past grandeur.
“With these points in mind, I settled upon using spools of thread to give me the colour palette and I arranged them in a line to allude to the shape of the hotel. I was shooting on a white table that gave me a partial reflection of the spools, which I felt fitted in with the shadow concept I was hoping to capture.”
Mick Eason, course leader, added: “The opportunity to work with the Belmont has been a pleasure and the experience students have gained from having their work exhibited can only expand the commercial opportunities available to them.”
The BA Commercial Photography allows students to progress from HND at college to gain a degree in Commercial Photography in just one year at RGU. It combines practical photography with key activities in relation to business start-up, as well as theoretical study, and is delivered jointly by Gray’s School of Art and Aberdeen Business School, along with North East Scotland College.
The course is designed to improve photographic skills in a professional and student-driven environment. Students have the opportunity to test their skills with a choice of supported topic themes, which were linked to live projects and industry liaison.
Norma Cameron, also studying on the course, said: “I found the opportunity to produce an image which would be a metaphor for the film The Grand Budapest Hotel very refreshing and meant we could be as creative as we liked, which is always good for the soul.
“For my image I chose to photograph a red rose with purple ribbon also in the frame, the rose represented love - the love the old lady felt for the concierge, the love between friends, the love of the concierge for his hotel; the purple of the ribbon represented grandeur and luxury of the hotel itself. One of the rose petals had begun to fade, which represented the fading of the elderly guests who were infatuated with the concierge.”