Psycho-geography describes the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. The term psycho-geography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955 in order to explore this. Inspired by the French nineteenth century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces.
psyco -geography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and also a sense of drifting or movement,this also has a strong connection to situational international. This movement of photography was defined by Guy Debord as the study of precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment,this is due to the means of the environment becoming more man made and not having freedom of movement and now a given route is always occurring. Everything is now consciously organised or not,on the emotions and behavior of individuals,This could also be explained by a box filled with inventive strategies for exploring cities and anything that takes a pedestrian off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of urban landscapes altogether.
It was originally invented to be developed by the avant garde movement,the originator of what became known as unitary urbamism,is highly influential.The idea of urban wandering relates to the older concept of the flâneur, theorized by Charles Baudelaire. Debord and others worked to clarify the concept of unitary urbanism, in a bid to demand a revolutionary approach to architecture.
Unitary Urbanism – the synthesis of art and technology that we call for — must be constructed according to certain new values of life, values which now need to be distinguished and disseminated.The Situational’s response was to create designs of new urbanized space, promising better opportunities for experimenting through mundane expression. Their intentions remained completely as abstractions. Guy Debord’s truest intention was to unify two different factors of “ambiance” that, he felt, determined the values of the urban landscape: the soft ambiance — light, When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself. The ambiance of play is by nature unstable. At any moment, “ordinary life” may prevail once again.
Is that there is a strong sense of freedom of constriction within the art from,and also a strong sense of abstraction,there are boundless ways in which to conceive space in which we travel and the individuality between each piece is highly interesting.
Burtynsky was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharines,
Ontario. He received his BAA in Photography/ Media Studies from Ryerson University in 1982, and in 1985 founded Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory, digital imaging and new media computer-training centre catering to all levels of Toronto’s art community.
Edward Burtynsky is known as one of Canada’s most respected photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over sixty major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.
Image analysis
Image Analysis
I chose this image of Edwards as visually the image is stimulating and the composition of the image is very interesting as the image has been broken into three different sections, the sky, the yellow flowers and the big mounties.In the image the two main colours are yellow and the black are two very contrasting colour which in this example are very complementary to each other. The concept of this image could have been taken with the idea to show how much humans can alter the scene of the natural world, when humans are talked about changing nature it is looked upon in a negative way, this image could have been taken to show that it can be changed in a way that is beautiful.This image was taken in Canola Fields, Luoping, Yunnan Province, China.
New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact. Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape.
Bracketing in general is a term used to describe a sequence of images taken by a camera with slight differences in the settings.
following on that, Exposure Bracketing involves taking a sequence of pictures of the same scene at a range of exposure settings. The reason you do this is because the camera might have been ‘deceived’ by the light available(too much or too little) and your main subject may be over or under exposed. By taking multiple shots you are making sure that whatever is the case, then you would have properly compensated for it.
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing task of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.
Cameras are limited to the amount of image detail they can record when the sensor is exposed to light. Whether you’re using the auto settings or are taking pics using skillfully tuned manual settings, your goal is trying to take advantage of the available light to maximize the detail in the result image. The problem is, when you’re shooting heavy shadows and bright lights, you are forced into losing detail in one range or the other.
As you can see in the image above, the camera has taken several images at the same time with different exposure levels, the final image is created by layering and combining them in order to get this look.
The basic idea of creating a combination image with multiple exposures is not new to photography. As long as cameras have had the limitation of standard ranges, clever photographers have been hacking ways to create the best possible image. Brilliant photographer Ansel Adams used dodging and burning techniques to selectively expose his prints and create amazing rich detail in images.
Reasons for using this area for the shoot
I picked this area for the psycho-geography shoot as the area has gone through many changes throughout time and has been used for many different purposes through the course of history, so seeing the contrast between then and now will be interestin
Psycho-Geography West Park
Contact Sheet
Images from the shoot
Final Images from the shoot
I feel that this image is the best overall out come fro this shoot. I was having trouble lining up the image of jersey from the past with the same location in the modern day as the wind was very strong which kept blowing the picture out of place, but i think that i achieved lining up the two best in this image. I also think that this was the strongest image from the shoot, as because in this image the contrast between the old and the new jersey landscape the contrast between the two can be seen the greatest.
Psycho-Geo graphics is the exploring urban environment. 
psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955, is has been defined as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.
Psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled to stipulate the finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing “Theory of the Dérive” in 1958, a document which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed through the act of dérive. Psychogeography has its roots in dadaism and surrealism.
Dadaism
Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century.Dada flourished in Paris, in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works.
Dada artists felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting and then prolonging it – including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old.
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s,
and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects, and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself. Its aim was to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.
Jeff Brouws (born 1955) is a self-taught artist and photographer. He took lots of typology photographs of America’s rural, urban and suburban landscapes. He used typology photographs to document the characteristics of the nation. He takes influence from the New Topographic movement and the writings of cultural geographers. He is the author of seven books and his photographs can be found in major private and public collections including the Whitney Museum of Art.
In this photograph Brouws used the fluorescent lighting from the motel to illuminate his photograph. This created contrast between the bright motel sign and the dark and dramatic background. It appears that a deep depth of field was used as the whole of the photograph is in focus. The photograph is generally quite dark so a low ISO of 100 or 200 will have been used along with a slower shutter speed of around 1/25 to let enough light into the lens.
There is lots of use of colour in this photograph – the bright red in the motel sign catches the attention of the viewer and it contrasts with the dark blue of the clouds. There is a wide tonal range in this image which makes it even more dramatic and interesting to look at. The photograph has lots of texture in the clouds which makes the photograph more realistic along with the 3D effect that the motel sign in front of the clouds brings. The central position of the motel makes it clear that it is the main focus of the photograph and it gives somewhere for the eye to be led to.
This photograph is one example of Brouws typology work. He worked to show the differences in the same style objects. He showed the diversity of structures all over America and the different cultures that could be seen. This helped to open the viewer’s eyes to each others differences and respect each other more.
Bernd Becher (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (1934 – 2015) were German conceptual artists and photographers that worked as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their typologies of industrial buildings and structures. They are the founders of the ‘Becher School’ and influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award.
In this photograph natural daylight will have been used to capture it. You can tell because of the soft tones and natural contrast within the photograph. The photograph is slightly over-exposed as can be clearly seen in the background so a slightly higher ISO such as 400 or 800 may have been used along with a potential shutter speed of 1/20-1/80. A deep depth of field has been used at the whole of the photograph is in focus.
There is no colour in the image as it is a black and white photograph. This shows that the viewer should be looking at the details of the subject instead of colours. There is a wide tonal range, ranging from the contrasting shadows of the structure to the over-exposed background. There is clear texture in the structures which makes the photograph more realistic to the viewer and gives it a slight 3D effect. There is pattern and repetition in the beams of the structures which makes the photograph more aesthetically pleasing for the viewer.
Bernd and Hilla Becher would document architectural structures all over Germany. They took photos of similar typologies and would make compositions of them all together. This is just one example of the work that they would do. They captured the pleasing aesthetics in the buildings deemed ugly and showed the country that there is more to it if they look closely. The Becher couple documented all sorts of structures and worked to open the countries eyes to what was right in front of them.
Lewis Baltz was a visual artist and photographer who was a significant figure in the new topographics movement. His work has appeared in museums, exhibitions and has been published in books. Technical - The choice of black and white is repeated throughout this movement, it creates depth in the photograph as it has reduced the colours to shades which changes the direction of focus onto the tones in the photograph. The high resolution and natural daylight captures every detail in a bland scene and exaggerates the dullness and precise form of man made structures. Visual - The photographs serves an aesthetic quality through the minimal shapes and lack of subjects which allows the viewer to concentrate on the straight and rigid lines that contrast with broken and curved wires. Black and white adds to the minimal theme with basic shades. Conceptual - The photo reflects the movement away from natural landscapes with its banal and ugly qualities yet it finds satisfaction through its minimal style. It also highlights the reality of the progress of man, and the destruction of natural landscapes that have been replaced with flat concrete streets and rectangular buildings infested with wires, pipes, plastic and metal. It could be argued that the concept of the photograph is accepting this development of order and convenience. Photo shoot - When I went out for this photo shoot I stuck to old run down buildings with interesting characteristics, colours and objects within them with rigid lines and edges.
final images -
I've chosen pictures that have a lot of simple basic shapes in them, some more than others. Each photo has ugly and banal features, especially in the buildings as they have been stripped and worn down to what this society perceive as ugly. This statement is reinforced in the last image where it has hazard and construction signs, signalling that it has no uses and only dangerous qualities to it. I reduced the colours in each picture, most to just black and white to reinforce the simplicity that the structure of each picture reflects.