My 4th photographic shoot has been based around ‘water’. I categorized nature into 4 sections I would focus on photographing, water being one of them. Before my shoot, I have looked at photographers who incorporate water photography into their work, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Rinko Kawauchi. Hiroshi specializes in ‘seascapes’, an area of work focusing on the distinct horizon between sea and sky. On the other hand, Rinko looks at the sublime, including photographs of the water in her large collection of work. She uses the element of light to her advantage, something I have taken inspiration of in my photograph pictured below. I have captured the light hitting the water and glistening in the reflection. I photographed and video-captured this to show the movement of light and include motion in my imagery. I believe these primary sources represent the beauty of how light and water come together to explore the sublime.
2.
For the second part of my photographic study on water, I have looked at the source of habitat it provides in the environment to wildlife. As I am looking at variation of nature for my project, I thought it would be an interesting angle to look at the various ways in which water can be photographed; one way being as an element, another as a habitat and another as a form of patterns and abstraction.
3.
My final area of study is based around the patterns, form and abstract nature of water. The variety of images I have taken of water in the sea and reservoirs, show the interesting patterns, and shapes within the water. I have edited the photos into black and white to show resembelance to Sugimoto’s work, as well as highlighting the varying shades and tonal contrasts as a result of different white balance and lighting.
Using one of my photographs, I have created an edit in response to the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s. Like Hiroshi does with his photographs, I have separated the horizon from the sea with a distinct landscape line. Using Photoshop CC, I have filled in the top half of the photo with a pale grey colour to contrast with the black and white water.
Hiroshi Sugimoto is an example of an alternative landscape photographer. Sugimoto, born on February 23, 1948, is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory. His use of an 8×10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures means Sugimoto has gained a reputation as a photographer of the highest technical ability. He is equally acclaimed for the conceptual and philosophical aspects of his work. Sugimoto has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1994), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1995), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2003) and the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (2004). His most recent exhibition, “Lost Human Genetic Archive”, is showing at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum from Sept. 3 – Nov. 13, 2016, incorporating selected images from Seascapes among others.
Seascapes
In 1980 he began working on an ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon, Seascapes, in locations all over the world, using an old-fashioned large-format camera to make exposures of varying duration (up to three hours). The locations range from the English Channel and the Cliffs of Moher to the Arctic Ocean, from Positano, Italy, to the Tasman Sea and from the Norwegian Sea at Vesterålen to the Black Sea at Ozuluce in Turkey. The black-and-white pictures are all exactly the same size, split exactly in half by the horizon line. Sugimoto describes his vision of sky and water as a form of time travel.
“THE SEASCAPES ARE BEFORE HUMAN BEINGS AND AFTER HUMAN BEINGS.”
Tyrrhenian Sea Priano, 1994
Image analysis:
Hiroshi uses prolonged exposure times in order to produce flat and clean images in which the ocean has creases rather than ripples and waves. He freezes time, stills movement, and makes the seascape into an unrecognizable abyss. His use of contrasting light and dark explores the haunting concept of battle between life and death. His black and white photographs stand out from the works of other photographers in its use of natural light. Hiroshi’s work embraces shadows and forms. His photographs are left open to interpretation and make viewers question the notion of his work. As a photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto has a reputation for having some of the most impressive technical abilities.
“Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let’s just say that t here happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.”
MMichael Marten, born in London, has been involved in photography since he was a teenager. For his first job he was caption writer at the Camera Press photo agency. And in 1973 he was one of a group who published ‘An Index of Possibilities’, an alternative encyclopedia of ideas. Since 2003, Michael Marten has concentrated on landscape photogrpahy. His first major series was ‘Sea Change’ (2003-2012).
Michael Marten Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. 25 and 31 August 2007. High water 4.30pm, low water 2pm
His series ‘Sea Change’, shows and excellent use of diptych (dictionary def: a painting, especially an altarpiece, on two hinged wooden panels which may be closed like a book), and trptych (dictionary def: a picture or relief carving on three panels, typically hinged together vertically and used as an altarpiece; a set of three associated artistic, literary, or musical works intended to be appreciated together). An example of a diptych in Michael Marten’s work is the image above of the Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. An example of a trptych is the image below of St Ives, Cornwall.
Michael Marten St Ives, Cornwall. 15 and 16 June 2011. High water 6.30pm, low water 12.30pm
He explores low vs high tides to see how it changes the landscape. He travelled to different parts of the British coast to photogrpah identical views at high and low tide, six or eighteen hours apart. His photographs revel how the twice daily rhythm of the sea flowing out (ebb) and the sea flowing back in (flood) can dramatically transform the landscape he was photographing
Cloudscape photography is photography of clouds or sky. An early cloudscape photographer, Belgian photographer Léonard Misonne (1870–1943), was noted for his black and white photographs of heavy skies and dark clouds. In the early to middle 20th century, American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) created a series of photographs of clouds, called “equivalents” (1925–1931). According to an essay on the series at the Phillips Collection website, “A symbolist aesthetic underlies these images, which became increasingly abstract equivalents of his own experiences, thoughts, and emotions”. More recently, photographers such as Ralph Steiner, Robert Davies and Tzeli Hadjidimitriou have been noted for producing such images.
Equivalents
In the summer of 1922, Alfred Stieglitz began to take photographs of clouds, tilting his hand camera towards the sky to produce dizzying and abstract images of their ethereal forms. In an article the following year, Stieglitz maintained that these works were a culmination of everything he had learned about photography in the previous forty years:
“THROUGH CLOUDS I WANTED TO PUT DOWN MY PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE—TO SHOW THAT MY PHOTOGRAPHS WERE NOT DUE TO SUBJECT MATTER—NOT TO SPECIAL TREES, OR FACES, OR INTERIORS, TO SPECIAL PRIVILEGES, CLOUDS WERE THERE FOR EVERYONE—NO TAX AS YET ON THEM—FREE.”
Over the next eight years, he made some 350 cloud studies, largely produced as contact prints on gelatin silver postcard stock. Stieglitz called these photographs Equivalents. More than describing the visible surfaces of things, the works could express pure emotion, paralleling the artist’s own inner state. Stieglitz, along with many of the artists of his circle, argued that visual art could assume the same nonrepresentational, emotionally evocative qualities as music. Indeed, music was an inspiration for the Equivalents, and this is reflected in the early titles he gave them: Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs (1922) and Songs of the Sky (1923). Stieglitz did not limit himself to clouds, or allusions to music, in these photographs: one notable work, Spiritual America, shows a close-up of the nether regions of a harnessed gelding (a castrated male horse), the image serving as a metaphor for the artist’s impression of a diminished American culture in the same way that his depictions of clouds represented his emotions. Stieglitz often presented the Equivalents in series or sets, recombining different groupings of prints for exhibition.
The Cloudman
The “Cloudman“, Dr. John A. Day, is a professor emeritis from Linfield College, in Oregon, USA, who taught meteorology for over forty years and who has a great passion for sharing the wonder of clouds. Now in his nineties, he continues to write, teach, and inspire people of all ages, around the world. His photography and writings are found in international publications and museums, and are used by artists, musicians, teachers, and many other cloud lovers. In 1962 he was granted a Faculty Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to study Cloud Physics at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, England. In 1971 he returned to England, this time on sabbatical leave, for intensive study of the History of Cloud Classification, focusing on the work of Luke Howard, England’s first meteorologist. Day’s interest in clouds was first of a technical nature, learning to forecast their appearance and development. Studies of clouds in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s were directed toward gaining a fuller understanding of the physical causes that led to the formation of particular cloud types. In this period he started photographing clouds which led to an extensive collection of photographs. In later years his focus of interest has shifted form technical to artistic, and through the medium of photography, he attempts day by day to capture the beauty and majesty seen in the cloud forms that grace the sky. His photographs are rich in colour and greatly differ from the works of Alfred Stieglitz’.
MANY SKIES ARE SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL TO BEHOLD. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SAY IT. SHEER BEAUTY! THE COMBINATION OF FORM, POSITION, GRADATIONS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, AND EVEN COLOR IN THE LATE EVENING AND EARLY MORNING HOURS IS PLEASING TO THE EYE, AND STIRS AN INNER SENSE THAT CAUSES ONE TO BREATHE AN INAUDIBLE, “AHH, THE GREAT ARTIST AT WORK!”
Franco Fontana was born in 1933 in Modena. He took up photography in 1961 and joined an amateur club. He held his earliest solo shows in 1968 in Modena, his native city, which marked a turning point in his career. He had published over severnty books with Italian, French, German, Swiss, Spanish, American and Japanese publishers. His photographs have appeared worldwide in over 400 exhibitions, solo and collective. His images are in collection in over fifty public and private, Itlaisn and international galleries. Many companies have asked him to collaborate on advertising campaigns, he had published photographs in The New York Times and various other major magazines, with Fontana being invited to hold photography workshops in various school, universities and institutes such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Every year he holds academic courses at the Politecnico di Torino, and the LUISS University, Rome. He is the director of the Toscana Fotoferstival and has collaborated with the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the French Ministry of Culture.
Fontans photography mainly depicts extremely aesthic portrayals of natural landscapes, using vibrant colours and a high saturation to link beauty to what would typically be seen in things such as flower, fields and the sky. What has inspired me is his use of aesthetics through a more unusually high saturation, depicting which would usually be everday scenes in a more visually appealing approach. Here I intend to go about photographing nature in a more aesthetic manner, using the textures and patterns found in each subject as a means of photographing a hidden viewpoint not usually seen to the everyday eye. Some examples of his work can be seen below:
After looking over some of his works I decided that I would go onto analyse one of his images, by doing this it would allow me to have a broader knowledge regarding the techniques used to photograph the pictures and the more conceptual side of them. To do this I would have to look at three categories, technicality, visual and conceptual, the image that I have selected to study is called Paesaggio Basilicata, and was photographed 1990, depicting the use of minimalist styled composition of a agricultural landscape:
Technical:
Technically the image is composed using a very minimalist technique, capturing and using only the yellow crops and the contrasted black and white backdrop to provide the image with an overall very aesthetic product. The photo has been taken in two filters, one being coloured and the other monochrome, by doing this it really highlights the shadows that make up the layers of the hill seen in the background and as a result create an abstract like effect which in a way depicts them as waves. To stop the monochrome becoming too overpowering Fontana has included two small trees located in the center of the photo, including this allows for a more symmetrical and aesthetic looks as the continual gradients of the hill are broken up and separated. The yellow contrasts this due to it being a contrast to black and so allows the shades on the hillside to pop even more.
Visual:
Looking at the image its evident that a high saturation has been used to create the vivid colour of the grass which is depicted unnaturally yellow. This is also contrasted by the monochrome hills which by doing so allows for all of the hills to have a layered portrayal used by the darker areas which have highlighted and smoothed out the grass to create a more gradient effect as a result. Composition wise the placement of the trees in the center has definitely been thought about, this is because of how it breaks up the otherwise consistent pattern found throughout the photo, with the yellow flowers taking on about 1/3 of the image up so that it cant become too overpowering due to its colours.
Conceptual:
The style used for this photo is based on his on vibrant language, Photographic Trans-avantgarde, abstracting the landscape and its colours. By using things such as a higher saturation he aims to create ideals for people regarding the aestheticism of an area which is often over-exaggerated in order to push a certain mind-set onto the viewer.
Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to study drawing and painting. A trained musician, Kandinsky approached color with a musician’s sensibility. An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative concepts of color on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract art movement in the early 20th century. In Munich, Kandinsky was accepted into a prestigious private painting school, moving on to the Munich Academy of Arts. But much of his study was self-directed. He began with conventional themes and art forms, but all the while he was forming theories derived from devoted spiritual study and informed by an intense relationship between music and color.
Color became more an expression of emotion rather than a description of nature or subject matter. He formed friendships and artist groups with other painters of the time, such as Paul Klee. He frequently exhibited, taught art classes and published his ideas on theories of art. He had already formed the New Artists Association in Munich; the Blue Rider group was founded with fellow artist Franz Marc, and he was a member of the Bauhaus movement alongside Klee and composer Arnold Schoenberg. Back in Germany after clashing theoretically with other artists, he taught at the Bauhaus school in Berlin and wrote plays and poems. In 1933, when the Nazis seized power, storm troopers shut down the Bauhaus school. Although Kandinsky had achieved German citizenship, World War II made it impossible for him to stay there. In July 1937, he and other artists were featured in the “Degenerate Art Exhibition” in Munich. It was widely attended, but 57 of his works were confiscated by the Nazis.
What is the book about?
The book acts as a reflection of anticipating “the spiritual turning-point” where Kandinsky looks at how this could occur within people. To do this Kadinsky looks at the artistic meanings of the psychology of colour, the compositional interrelation of forms etc. As a result of this her main goal as an artist becomes the constant search to find the very innermost necessity that can be found within the spiritual foundations of any individual. When looking through the initial pages of the book it is made very clear that Kadinsky is trying to anticipate the emergence of abstract art as the purest form of influence on the human soul, allowing many to view the future optimistically, foretelling the upcoming emergences of spirituality. Some examples of the book and its content can be seen below:
After reading through a bit of his book and looking over some of his artwork, I decided to go onto analyse a piece of his work that for me summed up his points stated in the book and his link between spirituality and the individual. The image I have selected is called ‘On White II’, and was created 1923:
Visual: The piece overall is very aesthetic through its contrasting bright colours and the use of negative space to create feeling within the blocks and random assortment of shapes jotted around. The bright colours for me draw a sense of happiness linked together with gloom, this is due to how the vibrant colours compliment each other bringing about a sense of joy, however contrasted to this is the darker greens and black which for me derives the image of its joy and instead implemented some underlying perspective of loss of gloom which could potentially be interpretted.
Technical: When looking over the image its clear that though the image looks like a random assortment of coloured shapes each piece has been carefully placed to be as effective as possible to that it can impact the viewer through its paint splatter like composition. The use of black within allows to break up the overlapping shapes which otherwise would have become too overpowering without a border. For me the use of the negative space occationally included with a few black lines adds to the overall effectiveness due to how it boxes in and compresses the piece so that it is only confined to one area making it as a result more minimalist.
Contextual: Kandinsky used an array of geometric shapes and lines in a colourful and riotous contemporary display, prompting many artists to imitate his style. On White II, is located at Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, France. As the title suggests, white is predominant in this painting, including the background. Kandinsky used white to represent life, peace and silence. The majority of the geometric shapes are presented in a variety of colours, reflecting the artist’s love for the free expression of inner emotions. Striking through the kaleidoscope of shapes and colours are bold, spiked barbs in black, representing non-existence and death. Kandinsky liked to paint while listening to music, and On White II, is his interpretation of the music, as created by his inner consciousness. The abstract and possibly mesmerising display of shapes and colours can be compared with the complexity of a musical composition.
Field painting was a term that originally was applied to the work from about 1950 of three American abstract expressionist painters, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. The words ‘colour field painters’ was the title of the chapter dealing with these artists in the American scholar Irvine Sandler’s ground-breaking history, Abstract Expressionism, published 1970.
From around 1960 a more purely abstract form of colour field painting emerged in the work of Helen Frankenhaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam and others. It differed from abstract expressionism in that these artists eliminated both the emotional, mythic or religious content of the earlier movement, and the highly personal and painterly or gestural application associated with it. In 1964 an exhibition of thirty-one artists associated with this development was organised by the critic Clement Greenberg at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He titled it Post-Painterly Abstraction, a term often also used to describe the work of the 1960 generation and their successors.
In Britain there was a major development of colour field painting in the 1960s in the work of Robyn Denny, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and others. Some examples of field paintings can be seen below:
Color Field Paintings emerged out of the attempts of several artists in the late 1940s to devise a modern, mythic art. Seeking to connect with the primordial emotions locked in ancient myths, rather than the symbols themselves, they sought a new style that would do away with any suggestion of illustration.The style was championed most enthusiastically by critic Clement Greenberg, who acclaimed the advances it achieved in the realm of form and composition. Bemoaning what he saw as the increasingly imitative, academic qualities of some action painters, he argued that Color Field Painting represented the way forward. His advocacy of the style proved highly influential.
From here I wanted to explore the typical aspects that could be found within many field paintings. To do this I would need to analyse a painting and look at the technical, visual and conceptual ideas behind each brush stroke. By doing this I would like to take inspiration from this and use it towards a future shoot regarding Franco Fontana, using a highly saturation landscape to create abstract work which highlight the texture and patterns that can be found in everyday life regarding hills around the coast. The painting I have chosen to analyse is called White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) by Mark Rothko:
Technical: The painting, top to bottom, signifies Rothko’s multiform style of abstract painting. A rose ground, darker in color on top and paler at the bottom, holds a horizontal yellow rectangle, followed by a black horizontal strip. A white rectangular band is in the center of the painting, and the bottom is lavender. Several tones of the colors were used, establishing the effect of a wide range of mood and atmosphere. Whilst not being that technical, the lack of form or structure presents the viewer with a piece that becomes aesthetic to the eye, however its simplicity provides effectiveness from how it allows the viewer’s mind to wonder and interpret each painting to a more personal level.
Visual: Mark Rothko continued to simplify the compositional elements of his paintings. In 1950, he began to divide the canvas into horizontal bands of color. Despite the frontal composition and absence of spatial illusionism in these works, the broad bands of color appear simultaneously to float in front of the picture plane and to merge with the color field upon which they are place, as in White Center (yellow pink and lavender on rose), 1950. A luminosity results from the repeated layering of thin washes of paint, which allows some underpainting to show through the upper coats. In each work of this period, Rothko sought only subtle variations in proportion and color, yet achieved within this limited format a broad range of emotions and moods. The photo at the top displays this painting’s supreme color choices, namely yellow, pink and lavender on rose.
Conceptual:
The piece represents Rothko’s love for reduction, colour, shape, balance, depth and composition, all of which are surrounded by cloudy edges against a undetermined backdrop. The idea behind the piece was to reduce the colours and the forms expanded in size, dwarfing the background which disappears behind the towering coloured forms. Many can interpret it as a dominance of colour using vivid and lush colours provide contrast and symmetry, for many it presents us with the idea that Rothko is enveloping the viewer and inviting us to contemplate and emotively respond to the space he has created.
This is an artist reference for my exam, as I am inspired by his cutlery images to create similar images experimenting with light and darkness to create shadows and other similar effects as the images he creates when exploring photography with cutlery. This artists fits into the theme variation and similarity because he is exploring cutlery (which is an everyday object), and he is focused on looking into the similarity between forks and spoons, but the variation in how they are perceived, using light as an important factor in order to create such unique and varied images. He experiments with different positioning’s of the cutlery, as well as a variation of camera perspectives he uses to capture these images.
Luitad’s image
This image by Luitad is intriguing due to how he has manipulated the background and lighting to create this unique shadow effect. He used what looks like two forks and one spoon to create the image above. He must have used a reflection of some sort (maybe a mirror) as you can see the reflection of the cutlery. I think this is very effective in achieving such a creative series of images. Luitad is using an artificial light to portray the forks and spoons as a sort of silhouette. I like how the sides of the forks and spoon are portrayed really dark due to how Luitad has positioned the lighting. This silhouette effect makes the image overall a lot more appealing.
Luitad’s images are inspiring me to do something similar. I want to do a shoot based on cutlery, where I would experiment with lighting to explore shadows and silhouette effects.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, (born April 23rd, 1775 in London, England and died December 19th, 1851, London), was an English Romantic landscape painter whose “expressionistic studies of light, colour, and atmosphere were unmatched in their range and sublimity“. From 1792, he spent his summers touring the country in search of subjects, filling his sketchbooks with drawings to finish later on with watercolours. His early work is topographical (concerned with the accurate depiction of places). From 1796, Turner started to use oil paintings as well as watercolours. The first, Fishermen at Sea (1796), is a moonlight scene and was praised by a present critic as having the work “of an original mind.”
J.M.W Turner mood-board of his paintings
Turner’s work fits in with the theme variation and similarity because he explores light and colour and presents this throughout his amazing paintings. He uses light as a starting point to create his art work – he was an artist of the 18th and 19th century which is another stem of inspiration for my project. I like how Turner has created his work based on light, and has used colour to incorporate this idea into his paintings well. I am intrigued by this as I want to explore light and shadows, and on the light aspect of my project, I think I would like to take an approach like Turner, using colour to create unique images that are influenced with light (and shadows).
