Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect, he was born in 1948 in Tokyo. He took his earliest photographs in high school, photographing film footage of Audrey Hepburn as it played in a movie theater. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm ‘New Material Research Laboratory’. Sugimoto has spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’, or photographs serving as a time capsule for a series of events in time. His work also focuses on transience of life, and the conflict between life and death. His work includes photographs of waxwork-museum figures, drive-in theaters, and Buddhist sculptures, all of which similarly blur distinctions between the real and the fictive. Sugimoto is also deeply influenced by the writings and works of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the Dadaist and Surrealist movements as a whole.

David Prentice

David Prentice was a English born painted who died aged 77, had an unusual trajectory as an artist. In the 1960s, when he was one of the founders of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, his work was hard-edged, abstract, close to the Op art of a period when young artists and architects were full of ideas for new beginnings. David’s art was about new forms, his hero Piet Mondrian.

His subject for the majority of his work was the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire he knew these hills very well as he took many walks over these hills in which he always had his sketchpad in hand. The forms of the hills were a constant, the weather constantly changing. He painted with the concern for structure and surface that had characterized his earlier work. The watercolors, often done on the spot, were more specific but the paintings done in the studio were as carefully constructed as ever.
His range of landscapes expanded to include dramatic cityscapes of London, The river themes, and the landscape of Skye, Lake District and the Welsh mountains.

I think that there is a clear connection between the works of David Practise and Hiroshi Sugimoto , they both take more of an abstract approach when looking and a landscape. In both of their works there is an absence of any man made structure, do it makes their works have a lack of identification to them, although we are able to guess where the work is based off, as to where the artist live and work. However their works do have a graet contrast between them, Prentice paints with a wide range of colour and the vibrancy of the colour is a noticeable feature of his work. Whereas the lack of colours in Hiroshi Sugimoto work is what makes his work more interesting a re in forces the sense of life and death in his work.

Étienne-Jules Marey, born 5 March 1830, in Beaune, was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer.

To study the flight of birds, he invented a camera in 1882 with magazine plates that recorded a series of photographs; the pictures could be combined to represent movements. In 1894 he adapted the motion-picture camera to the microscope.

His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of laboratory photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema.

Marey’s chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, with all the frames recorded on the same picture. Using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, molluscs, insects, reptiles, etc. Some call it Marey’s “animated zoo”. Marey also conducted the famous study about cats always landing on their feet. He conducted very similar studies with a chicken and a dog and found that they could do almost the same.

Although Marey was a man of science, one cannot ignore his profound contribution to photography.

Image Analysis

I have chosen this photograph of Étienne-Jules Marey to anaylse because I like the effect of sequencing and want to incorporate it within my project in a way. This photograph is extremely old and the outcome and effects on the photograph are not intentional but a product of the time and camera, but I like the contrast of blacks and whites/creams and the almost border that is created by the white circle surrounding the two people, the focal point of the photograph. The blur adds an interesting abstract effect to the photograph. In conclusion this photograph is complex and interesting and has factors that I hope to photograph and include in my own project.

David Prentice was an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 he was one of the four founder members of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery. His work is hard-edged, abstract, close to the Op art of a period when young artists and architects were full of ideas for new beginnings.

For many years, his subject was the Malvern Hills, which he knew intimately from countless walks with sketchpad in hand. The forms of the hills were a constant, the weather constantly changing. He painted with the concern for structure and surface that had characterized his earlier work. The watercolors, often done on the spot, were more specific but the paintings done in the studio were as carefully constructed as ever.
In time his subjects expanded to include dramatic cityscapes of London, especially of the river, and the landscape of Skye, or rather its approaches.

I believe there are direct correlations between the work of David Prentice and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The key similarity is the attention to lighting and textures as appose to detail and displaying a landscape how we would usually see it. Instead, Prentice uses large brush strokes giving a faded/blury look to the landscape with emphasis on accurate depiction of light. Sugimoto focuses on using slow shutter speeds to bring about this faded look like Prentice does. Despite Sugimoto’s images being in black and white I believe there is a main focus on how lighting/weather can transform the similar landscape that he focuses on. Another key similarity in their works is the elimination of any man made features creating a difficulty in identification of a place.

https://www.kensukekoike.com/

Kensuke Koike is a Japanese contemporary artist, currently living in Slovenia, widely known for his exceptional skills in collage making.The Japanese artist has thus developed a certain taste for image destructuring. These new images have therefore their own independent life, barely connected to that of the original photos, showing that in the end everything depends on our point of view of reality and what we take into consideration. In kensuke’s images none of the images only moved around, which is a philosophy that he applies to all o this work “nothing is removed, nothing is added”. When editing my images inspired by his wok I will try to work by this same philosophy.

For example take an old portrait of a loving couple, cut their eyes out, switch them around and the relationship takes a new direction. This is what Kensuke’s work is about getting a new perspective on the way that images can be viewed. The image above is taken from his project in collaboration with Thomas Sauvin ‘No More No Less’ which is a photobook which was published last November. The publication came about after Koike was invited to work with Sauvin’s archive of old images that he recovered from Beijing silver-recycling centres.

The images where made by an unknown Shanghai University photography student in the 1980s, simple black-and-white studio headshots that have an evenness of style, tone and lighting throughout.

Dafna Talmor is a photographer, artist and lecturer who is based in London. She works with photography, video, and collaborations with other artists. Some of her work is displayed in in public galleries like Hiscox, Deutsche Bank and many private collections across the world. Her work work is also included in Robert Shores book, Post Photography: The artist with the camera, also Brady Wilks book, Alternative Photographic Processes: Crafting handmade images and been featured in many publications from Elephant Magazine, 1000 words, ArtReview and more.

Talmor’s most recent commission was from the FT weekend magazine for their supplement of Photo London 2018. Her most recent work includes that of Constructed Landscapes at the the TOBE Gallery in Budapest, 2018, and Photofusion in London a year earlier.

Talmor is also a associate Lecturer for the fine art course at Solent University in Southampton, and also leads the yearly summer school of fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London. She also works freelance as an international lecturer, and has run multiple workshops.

Sir Peter Blake was born on the 25th of June 1932. He is an English pop artist who has created an immense amount of iconic British artwork. Of this work he is best known for co-creating the cover artwork for the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. His other best known works include the cover of the Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, and the Live Aid concert poster. Peter Blake also designed the 2012 Brit Award which is designed by a different artist every year. As one of the best known British pop artists, Peter Blake is considered to be a prominent figure in the pop art movement as a whole. His paintings show his great interest in images from popular culture which he incorporates into his collages. His artwork has been so important for British culture, so much so that In 2002 he was knighted for his services to art. His chaotic aesthetic is something which I believe relates very closely to the work which I am intending to produce for this project, and therefore believe that to refer to Peter Blake is relevant.

Below are some examples of Blake’s work which I have spoken about…

Below I have embedded a 16 minute video which I believe to be very interesting, in which artist Damien Hirst visits Peter Blake’s studio. This video is an easy watch and I believe is shows Blake’s work process and work space and also allows you to have a second opinion and voice on what is discussed from Hirst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMK0OC9ro20&t=671s