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Reviewing And Reflecting

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 Overview

So far in the project I have heavily focused on ‘Stalking Photography’ which is a hybrid of documentary, street photography and portrait approaches.

The artists that I have researched and been influenced by are as follows:

  •  Henrik Malmström – He explored voyeurism, photographing unaware subjects who were committing minor crimes around his heavily gentrified area, he did this from the safety of his house window. His technique when photographing was to use very high ISO values to achieve, in a sense, ‘bad quality’ images that were grainy. He did this to mimic surveillance cameras and make a statement about surveillance of crimes and wrong doings as well as surveillance as a whole.
  • Hayahisa Tomiyasu – Due to a series of events, the photographer found himself at the window of his apartment awaiting the appearance of a fox he saw days prior, with his camera aimed at a tennis table by the bush in which he first saw the fox, the photographer noted the different uses of that tennis table; he found himself observing and documenting how different people interact and use that almost ordinary object and it fascinated him. His first book includes a series of images taken of the table at varying times of the year but each taken at the same angle.
  • Yevgeniy Kotenko – Similarly to Tomiyasu, this photographer studied how people interact with a bench outside of his apartment complex; his images focus a lot more on the subjects – showcasing all sorts of emotions and possible dialogues as well as situations and story lines the individuals could be experiencing at that moment.
  • Sophie Calle – Known to many as the pioneer of ‘stalking photography’. Calle had completed multiple projects that were essentially controversial and imposed on peoples lives and their belongings. ‘Suite Venitienne’ was one of her most controversial work yet, she had followed a man she met at a party all the way to Venice, following, recording and retracing his every step – where he went, what he did and who he did those things with. Her photographs were black and white, all taken from a place of hiding and always close to the subject.

The similarity between all these photographers is the concept of waiting for the right moment to photograph an unknown and unaware subject. All the photographs created images from a place of hiding, the images behold a voyeuristic nature due to this.

So far I have taken photographs in the style of Kotenko and Tomiyasu, the images were taken of complete strangers from the safety of my home and bedroom window; I used the techniques displayed by Malmström, high ISO level to mimic cameras and to, in a sense, cover and protect the identity of the subjects.  I have also completed 2 separate shoots in the style of Sophie Calle; I followed the journey of complete strangers and took photographs in a way that’s very similar to Sophie Calle. I have then took those images and further edited them to mimic security camera footage – this allowed me to bring together both the style of Malmström and Calle.

 

Essay

Essay – Clare Rae and Lewis Bush

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In what way can the work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae both be considered political?

At first glance, the work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae is very different and in that sense, the two exhibitions seem more than distant from each other. Though they do share a very major similarity as both artists are influenced by, make a statement about and (whether intentionally or not) include political aspects. In this essay I’ll be exploring the recent work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae, I aim to compare and contrast their political approaches and how evident this is in their photography, their projects and final exhibition.

‘Trading Zones’ by Lewis Bush focuses solely on the finance industry. As part of the project, the photographer took up residence on the heavily finance orientated island of Jersey; here Bush was able to experience the significance of finance and how its extensive impact affects the everyday people. The final exhibition compiles a variation of media and techniques, making it very visually and mentally stimulating to the audience.  He explores finance both from the inside and out; he collected employee photographs and merged them together to create a ‘perfect employee’ or an ‘average employee’ depending on how you view it. The technique was originally developed by Francis Galton⁴, who used it for anthropology (the study of ancient and everday societies). He also collected raw data from the overall population – composing and creating a wall display of quotes, opinions and images that people associate with the word ‘finance’ in Jersey. The idea and inspiration came from an artist called EJ Major who developed this idea for her project, she handed out little templates to strangers; the words written on them were “love is…”³ and she asked bypassers to fill it in with their own words, thoughts and feelings. Lewis Bush adapted this concept slightly; he used the words “finance is…”. Bush mentioned that the inspiration and driving force behind his work was this idea of how the majority of London, Lewis Bush’s home city, is owned offshore. He mentions in an interview that the “value of U.K property [is] at over £92 billion held in Jersey”¹, that alone is an astonishing statistic but it is also what influenced Bush to start this project. The concept of ownership of land and taxation is certainly political, there are many ongoing debates and law adjustments to prevent the abuse and loopholes that larger co-operations and people with money could use to their advantages.

‘Entre Nous’, translating to ‘Between Us’, is a project by Clare Rae that exhibits and brings together her photographs and the work of Claude Cahun. The exhibition contrasts the two sets of work, showcasing the similarities and giving life to normally archived and locked away imagery. Cahun, alternately known as Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, is well known for their political controversies. Clare Rae also took up residency on the island of Jersey, once home to the famous Claude Chahun. Claude Cahun was a surrealist and an alter ego of sorts, Lucy Schwob adapted this name as a disguise, her motive behind this was to be taken much more seriously as a supposedly male artist and start a movement of her own. Cahun’s photography promoted the surreal movement, it explored the queer culture, gender identity, gender fluidity and allowed Schwob to take control of her own body and represent gender in photography as a whole. Clare Rae’s exhibition is a response to that movement, her photographs depict her engaging with the Jersey landscape; which was once home to Cahun who moved here in the 1930s in hopes of escaping Nazis. In the final exhibition, Cahun’s photographs are showcased on a ‘white wall’,² whereas ‘her work is on a grey wall’². Clare Rae wanted this to be presented in such a way so that it becomes possible to ‘distinguish the [two] works’². Due to copyright laws, the copies of Cahun’s work must be destroyed once the exhibition is over. Undoubtedly, this exhibition is political, it centers all around controversial topics and breakthrough movements.

In conclusion, the work of Clare Rae and Lewis Bush is absolutely political, both artist take inspiration from political subjects that have influenced their lives and surrounding. Both artist target political aspects and political controversies in their projects and produce photographs, composite images and other media that expresses political opinions and values the artists may own. Even though the artists gave existence to two, very different  bodies of work, the overall motivation comes down to the reason why all photographers take and create images; to make a difference in the world- though it may be minor and almost insignificant at the start; as long as it causes a person to rethink something, causes an emotion, evokes a feeling or even stimulates the audience, the purpose of a political (or any photograph) is achieved.

Sources:

¹= quote from this interview.

²=Quote from Michelle Mountain, video about the exhibition

³= EJ Major, “love is…”

⁴= Francis Galton, Composite Portraits 

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Contextual Study – Spying/Stalking

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Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle has engaged in art as provocation. One of her first projects in 1983, The Address Book ,begins with the discovery of an address book, which she then uses to discover the life of its owner, contacting everyone within to access information about the owner. The point is voyeurism, or more accurately, a kind of intentional intrusion, but it is also and most essentially, an inquiry into the unbridgeable distances between us as people, the layers and everything we cannot know.

 “At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.”

The result is this thrilling book, first published in 1983 , blending detailed daily text entries with Calle’s elusive black and white photography. For Sophie Calle, the idea is to push the bounds of propriety, to go where one wouldn’t ordinarily go. This is an assault on privacy,  undertaken without permission and meant for the public, a public with which the subject may or may not wish to engage. That’s also one of the challenges of her work, the discomfort we feel as she crosses the line. How would it be if we were Henri B? Exposed without permission, written about, photographed?

Stalking in Photography

Stalking is unwanted or repeated surveillance by an individual or group towards another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The term stalking is used with some differing definitions. Although stalking is illegal in most areas of the world, some of the actions that contribute to stalking may be legal, such as gathering information, calling someone on the phone, texting, sending gifts, emailing, or instant messaging. They become illegal when they breach the legal definition of harassment (e.g., an action such as sending a text is not usually illegal, but is illegal when frequently repeated to an unwilling recipient).

First signs of stalking photography began with the paparazzi, these are independent photographers who take pictures of high-profile people, such as athletes, entertainers, politicians, and other celebrities, typically while subjects go about their usual life routines.

Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features  chance encounters and random incidents within public places, in a sense it is also a form of stalking photography.  Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history. This entails having also to navigate/ negotiate changing expectations in laws of privacy, security and property. In this respect the street photographer is similar to social documentary photographers or photojournalists who also work in public places, but with the aim of capturing newsworthy events; any of these photographers’ images may capture people and property visible within or from public places.

Stalking Services

The existence of services like Google Street View, recording public space at a massive scale, and the trend of self-photography, further complicates ethical issues reflected to stalking photography as a whole.

Google Earth Street View takes photos freely feature passers-by without their consent. The people, buildings as well as cars on the street view are presented to the whole world. Some people and organizations believe that the service provided by Google Earth violates people’s right to privacy. The Ethical Issues are involved here. Google Earth provides a new technology and therefore brings convenience to people’s life, but in some people’s mind, the street view is actually an invasion into privacy. In response, Google, however, has taken some actions to protect people privacy. They mark the license plate numbers of the cars as well as people’s faces in every photo they have taken. Google also has a way for individuals or nations to request that certain images be blurred or removed.

Global Positioning System satellite technology (also known as GPS) is embedded into many of the devices we use today for location purposes. One use of GPS is geotagging, sometimes geotagging is done automatically for us, such as when you take a picture with your phone. You don’t see it, but your location is automatically recorded in the meta-data of the photo. Othertimes we geotag ourselves on our social medias. Social networks have geotagging features built in (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) such as a ‘check-in’ or ‘add location’ feature that allows personal geotagging. Burglary, Identity Theft and Cyberstalking are only a few of the possible crimes that correlate to this topic.

Originally, the satellites used for GPS were created by the government to track military personnel. These same satellites are used to convey GPS information to drivers and third parties. The question is, who actually owns the data produced through the system?

Closed-circuit television, also known as CCTV in short, is the usage of video cameras for surveillance in areas that require monitoring such as banks, casinos, airports, military installations, and convenience stores.  As with all privacy issues, there is an argument saying that only criminals need to fear systems that monitor location, even if they are capable of covering the whole population.
Some say cameras make them feel safer. However several experts say that, although crime my be reduced in the necessarily small areas covered by the cameras, it is displaced elsewhere.

Resources Used : CCTV, GPS, Google Earth Maps,

Stalking in Photography:  Article1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4

Sophie Calle: My Blog Posts

 

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Experimentation in Photoshop – Surveillance and Stalking

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Overview/Plan

For this experimentation I will use the photographs I’ve taken in the style of Sophie Calle; photographs that depict the journey’s of unknown strangers. I aim to edit these photographs in a way that merges the concept of stalking and invading that Sophie Calle explores in much detail, with this idea of surveillance that I have also began to explore in the earlier stages of this project. I want to find a way to age the photographs/lower their quality to mimic surveillance cameras and the footage that they produce. I also want to add dates and times to add character and realism to my ‘surveillance footage’. After the photographs are edited in a way that I like, I want to test different methods of presenting the images; try out grid formats – similar to ones used in typology (Bernd Becherand Hilla Becher) or perhaps try presenting the images in a row like a sequence or comic strip that will showcase the progression of events.

I started by inserting the image; unlocking the layer on the side so that I can make permanent changes to the image. I then went onto the details of my image by selecting ‘file’ and then ‘file info’ – this displayed the exact date and time the image was taken and I copied this value. After that, I selected the text tool and pressed paste; from here I experimented with the positioning of the text, the size, the colour and the font until I reached an equilibrium. I was aiming for something simple but also easy to replicate.

In order to process to the next step I needed to make the different layers one; I did this by converting the text layer into a smart object and merging it down onto the picture layer. Then, I went into ‘Filter’, ‘Noise’ and ‘Add Noise’ to reach this interface. I moved the slider around until I was satisfied and applied the said filter to my overall image.

Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, I traced around the man, I then right clicked and copied the image onto a new layer using ‘Layer Via Copy’. This transferred the area I highlighted onto a separate layer where I could make adjustments. I went into ‘adjustments’ and then ‘Brightness And Contrast’ and edited the brightness, creating a stark contrast and in a sense, highlighting the man from his surrounding.

Presentation

A wider layout; One the first image I added a black and white filter over the image to eradicate the blue/green hue that the photos contained. On the second I did the same steps but didn’t add a black and white filter and therefore keeping the hues.

This photograph is longer vertically, I didn’t apply a black and white filter, this results in the photographs having a hue and the yellow text is much more prominent and visible in the image.

In this example, I opted for a much bigger space between the images; I also didn’t use the black and white filter and even made the background colour more brown to compliment and contrast the hues in the images.

This experiment was the opposite of the one before; instead of leaving huge space between the images I left none.

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Sophie Calle – My Response

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Planning

In Sophie Calle’s publication called ‘Suite Venitienne’ she follows a man, a complete stranger to her,  and photographs his journey. She records her observations in forms of photographs. As my response to her work, I plan to follow complete strangers for a fraction of their journey through town. I want to treat this as more of an experiment; explore and approach it in different ways. I don’t plan on following just a single individual – I’ll follow many characters and experiment with how close I can get to the subjects. I’ll start off with photographs from a safe distance before zooming in, adjusting lenses and getting closer to create a much more intimidating and risky photographs.  The lighting and setting will be natural; I’ll be adjusting my camera settings on the scene to reach an equilibrium. I plan to edit the photographs heavily in the post production part – I’ll use Adobe Lightroom to turn all the photographs black and white with the same contrast,  brightness and exposure settings throughout to maintain a very consistent theme in all the photos.

Contact Sheet

Adobe Lightroom Alterations

I began by inserting all my photographs from this shoot into Adobe Lightroom. Then, using the function of flagging photographs, I picked out the images that I think are successful and that I want to use and edit in the later stages. I filtered out all the non-flagged images so that I was left with only the images that I chose and I went into the ‘develop mode’ where I edited the first photograph to my liking.

‘Develop Mode’ allows complete adjustment of images. I firstly changed the colours into black and white – Sophie Calle photographed in black and white to add mystery and focus much more on the subjects. I then transformed and cropped the image in a way so that the subject is in the direct center. I adjusted the colour sliders to make certain colours more darker while others more brighter so that they stand out more. Once happy with my alterations, I right click and went into ‘Metadata Presets’ and then I pressed ‘Copy Presets’, essentially what this does is copy all the exact changes I have made to this photo and make them transferable onto other photographs. This results in all my images having the same adjustments done on them without having to edit them individually making the whole process much simpler and less time consuming.

The final result was a collection of 41 photographs that I want to experiment on. They are now much more similar to Sophie Calle’s work. I will export all the photographs as TIFF files so that I can edit and experiment with them on Adobe Photoshop in the next section of this project.

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Artist Study – Sophie Calle

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 Sophie Calle

Biography/Overview:

Born October 9th 1953, Sophie Calle is a french, writer, conceptual artist and photographer. She mixes image and text to provoke very intense responses typically stimulated by picture film or literature. Her most astounding works suggest human susceptibility, and examines intimacy and individuality as well as brushing on various types of stalking and surveillance.

In the process of secretly investigating, reconstructing or documenting strangers’ lives, Calle manipulates situations and individuals, and often takes disguise while doing so. Thus, in the act of pursuing a stranger to Venice, or taking the position of a hotel chamber maid to observe the guests, Calle conditions and recasts her own identity for that period of time. The documents or “evidence” that result from these conceptual projects are presented as photographs, photo-text installations and zines.

Career:

After completing her secondary education, Calle set off on a seven year expedition around the world, during which time she developed a strong sense of political justice, identifying herself as a Maoist, feminist and member of the proletarian Left. Upon her return to Paris, she found herself in an alien city, without a clear direction, without friends, without employment. As a result, she took to the streets, following strangers on the road like

a detective, recovering her hometown through the paths of others. The project eventually led her to follow one such stranger to Venice while surreptitiously taking photographs of his journey.

Image result for sophie calle biography

  In 1979, Calle invited strangers and friends to spend a few hours each on a single bed so that it was occupied continuously for eight days straight. She took photographs and conducted short interviews with each individual, one of whom was the actor Fabrice Luchini, and noted the important details of these brief meetings in a notebook: the topics they discussed, the positions of the sleepers, their movements in bed, a description of their breakfasts. “The Sleepers” caught the attention
of art critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, husband of one of the
subjects, who invited Calle to exhibit at the Paris Biennale in 1980.
Her work seeks to create a bridge between art and life through installations, photographs, text and video and borrows the style of reportage and inventory.

‘Suite Venitienne’

Venetian Suite consists of black and white photographs, texts and maps that document a journey the artist made to Venice in order to follow a man, referred to only as Henri B. She had previously briefly met him in Paris. Suite Venitienne records Calle’s attempts to track her subject over the course of his thirteen-day stay in Venice. She investigates and stalks him, enlisting the help of friends and acquaintances she makes in the city. Eventually Henri B. recognises Calle, and they share a silent walk. Even after this encounter Calle continues her project, shadowing Henri B. from a distance until his arrival back in Paris.

The photographs that accompany the text are candid snapshots that document Henri B.’s movements and record the places he visits in the city. Henri B. was a keen amateur photographer himself, and while shadowing her subject, Calle also attempted to replicate the photographs he took. The installation also includes photographs Calle took using a ‘Squintar’ mirrored lens attachment, which allowed her to photograph subjects without aiming her camera directly at them.
Despite these artistic precursors, Calle has described how her project was originally conceived as a personal exercise. She has said: ‘When I made it, I did not consider myself to be an artist. I was just trying to play, to avoid boredom.’ The political aspects of her work include surveillance; are we being constantly monitored? and to what extent is it acceptable? Furthermore, her project exploring the morality behind photographing a subject that is unwitting. It also touches on the socially accepted norms to do with modern photography – whats acceptable and what isn’t. Her work has caused a lot of controversy; many people applaud her concepts and bravery while others believe what she’s doing may be obsessive, wrong and breaching human rights.
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Rules Of Technicality – My Response

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Artist Reference and Contact Sheets

Heavily inspired by the work of Henrik Malmström, I planned to take photographs out of my window of bypassers in a documentary way like a CCTV would. I used very high ISO settings (25600) on my camera to achieve a very grainy look much like Henrik Malmström. However, I found it hard to achieve the obscenely grainy effect since I was using a modern camera that had ‘noise and grain reduction’ as a built in filter, since, most photographers don’t want their photographs heavily grained as that is usually viewed as ‘unprofessional’. Upon further research I found out that Henrik Malmström managed to bypass this obstacle by using a low quality disposable camera to take his photographs. I was not able to do this for this shoot, but, it is a possibility and area that I could explore in future shoots. 

Photoshop Manipulation

The First Outcome

This is the first set of images I’ve produced, It’s also my first look at surveillance photography and working in this sub genre. The photo editing and manipulation really improved and added more depth to my images; I’ll be working closely with this in the future of this project. The sequence of bypassers doesn’t have much correlation at this stage, I want to explore how to change this and somehow correlate and intertwine the photographs to show a linear story in multiple shots. I’ve presented the photographs in a way typology tends to be presented; linear grid filled with photographs that are very similar to each other but with subtle differences.

There are many similarities between mine and Henrik Malmström’s work, although we’re both photographing unaware subjects from the comfort of our windows – Malmström tends to focus much more on the person rather than the surrounding, I wanted to include more than just the subject in my shots to give more context and show the progress of time (the building becomes darker further into the night). Furthermore, Malmström has a lot more knowledge about his subjects and what they’re doing, I don’t. I think in a sense that make’s it much more interesting since it gives much more freedom to my imagination, especially since I want to focus on creating a story of what my subjects could be up to. One of my initial ideas is to explore police documentation and compose my photos in a way that police evidence would be stored and displayed. This relates directly to the political aspect of what Malmström does, he photographs crime and calls it ‘a minor wrongdoing’.

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Photographer Research

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 ‘TTP’ by Hayahisa Tomiyasu

Hayahisa Tomiyasu was born in 1982 Kanagawa, Japan. After studying photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University, he moved to Leipzig, Germany to study under Peter Piller. He currently lives between Leipzig and Zurich, where he now teaches.

Winner of MACK’s First Book Award : http://www.firstbookaward.com/2018/

Between these pictures, it’s difficult to place the table in time and space. The pictures aren’t ordered chronologically or by people or activity, but there is a rhythm to them that appears in the small references between pictures – short series that play off one another. Time passes too, but this is marked only by the randomly changing seasons and light of day; slightly longer shadows, browner and fewer leaves on the trees, melting snow, puddles that appear and evaporate. The table is a strange place, there are no pictures outside of the frame just person after person, table after table. The restricted view of Tomiyasu’s lens and the variety of people and their generic European fashion makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly where the table is. The table is a secluded world, one that attracts but doesn’t hold people.

In 2011 Hayahisa Tomiyasu started photographing a ping pong table located in a public athletic field across from his dorm in Leipzig, Germany for a series titled TTP. Tomiyasu had first noted the location after observing a white tailed fox perched near the legs of the table, and after waiting several days for the animal to return, he began to photograph the other life forms that congregated or paused near the outdoor game. Rather than spotting the fox, he captured families and daydreamers using the area as a bench or even a bed. I think it’s very interesting how this whole thing occurred from a something that was almost a  coincidence; if not for the fox, Tomiyasu would probably have never thought of photographing that exact tennis bench.

“At the time I had been living in a student doom in Leipzig and it was possible to photograph from window the table tennis table, how people from different countries use it in their way,” Tomiyasu had said in an interview. “And it could be the message of this work that the place could be everywhere.”

Although the whole concept happened out of pure coincidence, I still want to take inspiration from Tomiyasu’s work and have it influence my project; I like how he explores linear story telling in his images. The setting doesn’t change in his photographs but the subjects and models do. They tell their own story in their own way, those stories intrigues the audience as they provide very little and the rest is completely up to the imagination of the viewer. I like the mystery and minimalism that Hayahisa Tomiyasu has established in his work and want to include elements of that in my photography.

Sources:

https://petapixel.com/2018/04/04/photos-of-the-daily-life-of-a-public-ping-pong-table-in-germany/

https://rocket04.jeron.je/access?OQ9IAAH3UTPU3XJJVW684LAAGDF1Q0HV

‘Bench’ by Yevgeniy Kotenko

Similarly to the work produced by Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Tevgeniy Kotenko created a similar collection of photographs observing a bench from the comfort and safety of his home.

Starting in 2007, Kotenko began to shoot a local park bench outside the window of his parent’s fourth-floor kitchen window in Kiev. Sandwiched between a children’s playground and a walking path, the area proved to be a hotspot of colorful characters. Alcoholics, families, and lovers all congregate on the exact same bench during different times of the day, and when observed with Kotenko’s patient eye an almost Shakespearean drama begins to emerge over a decade of photo.

“I wasn’t thinking of making a series or a project,” shares Kotenko, “I didn’t select any particular time frame or set of situations to capture. Not until 2012 did my friends tell me that I should put together an exhibition of these photos.”

The  Ukrainian photographer Eugene Kotenko, has photographed the same bench for years, each shot is a little secret stolen from its subjects’s lives. We see the bench painted of blue and then not, covered by snow in winter, with some green around in spring and under the sun in summer, surrounded by yellow leaves in autumn, near the bin and then far, etc… but the real subject is never the bench, it’s the people who live that place. For this reason we are intrigued, for the intimate and social portrait than each photograph reveals.

There are some strong differences between  the photographs taken by Hayahisa Tomiyasu and the ones taken by Tevgeniy Kotenko. Although they both essentially photograph the same thing (people and a public object) their approaches are very different. Photographs taken by Tomiyasu are all taken from the exact same angle; the only thing that really changes is the people and the things they bring with them. On the contrast, Kotenko focuses a lot more on the subjects at hand; he clearly shows the changes that occur to the surrounding and the bench. He shows the physical changes and includes a lot more of the surrounding to give context to his photographs. This doesn’t break the mysterious illusion of not knowing why the subjects is there or what it’s doing but it adds comfort to the photographs.

Sources:

https://weburbanist.com/2018/02/20/dramatas-urbanae-photographers-10-year-study-of-a-single-public-bench/

http://blog.grainedephotographe.com/yevgeniy-kotenko-photo-on-the-bench-banc-public/

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Rules Of Technicality – Henrik Malmström

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Photographer Research

Finnish photographer Henrik Malmström (born in the year 1983) currently lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His work is often the result of the interaction with his immediate surroundings. In 2010 he self-published  his first book of photographs.

 In the same year he moved to Hamburg, Germany, where he developed and completed his two projects “A Minor Wrongdoing” and “Life is One Live it Well” by 2014. He is the co-founder and curator of the Müllkellergalerie, an art gallery located in a garbage room in Hamburg, Germany. In 2015 he co-founded the online platform ‘Vaciarte’, this that deals with arts and politics in city of  Buenos Aires.

The book I want to focus on is, Henrik Malmström’s  A Minor Wrongdoing, it records night-time street life in an area of Hamburg known for its criminality. The photos are taken with very high ISO making them appear grainy and low quality – almost like they were taken with a surveillance camera. The area is infamous for its gentrification ( it is the process of renovating and improving a  district so that it conforms to middle-class taste, most of the time forcing residents of the lower class area to evict the district). Many areas of St. Helier are undergoing gentrification so I think it will be very interesting to look into this topic and document the changes that happen.

Malmström chose to photograph a spot from his window. He was able to document and record from the safety of his home; in a sense it was like spying on the subjects. The 
neighbourhood of St. Georg in Hamburg is where Malmström chose to photograph his subjects; this area has recently undergone strict laws that were put in place top ban the street-based prostitution. His subjects tend to be women and their interactions with their clients; hence the name, ‘a minor wrongdoing’.

For my first shoot, I want to pick a visible spot on the street and photograph the bypassers in the night. I intend to use high ISO and a tripod to achieve successful photographs working in the style of Henrik Malmström. Much like Malmström, I will take the photos from my windows and the safety of my home.

 Further Links for referencing:

Henrik Malmström

A Minor Wrongdoing

Ode to Surveillance