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.

Night photography is photographs that have been taken outdoors when the sun has gone down. Photographers that shoot at night usually use artificial light and using a long exposure, exposing the scene for seconds, minutes, and even hours in order to give the film or digital sensor enough time to capture a usable image.

The following techniques and equipment are generally used in night photography.

• A tripod is usually necessary due to the long exposure times. Alternatively, the camera may be placed on a steady, flat object e.g. a table or chair, low wall, window sill, etc.
• A shutter release cable or self-timer is almost always used to prevent camera shake when the shutter is released.
• A camera lens with a wide aperture, preferably one with aspherical elements that can minimize coma

HDR stands for high dynamic range, which is the difference between the lightest light and darkest dark you can capture in a photo. Once the subject exceeds the camera’s dynamic range, the highlights tend to wash out to white, or the darks simply become big black blobs. It’s difficult to snap a photo that captures both ends of this spectrum, but with modern shooting techniques and advanced post-processing software, photographers have devised ways to make it happen.

The New Topographics 

The new topographic was a phrase to describe a group of American based photographers who were inspired by man made environments.Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity.

“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography. The show was curated by William Jenkins at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (Rochester, New York), and remained open to the public from October 1975 until February 1976. The photographers featured in this exhibition where; Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr. The  German couple, Bernd and Hilla Becher, were also invited to the exhibition, who was then teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany.

What was the new topographic a reaction to?

The movement was a reaction to the works similar the works of Ansel Adams which was portraying beautiful scenic landscapes which have seemingly have been untouched by humans. The group wanted to highlight that most of the world was not like this and once beautiful areas had become wastelands for mankind.

Contact Sheet 

Best Images from the shoot

Group F/64 was a group founded in 1932 by seven San Francisco photographers who all shared a similar photographic style – sharp-focused and carefully framed images. The pictorialist photographic style had been dominating for most of the early 20th century, however, the group wanted to offer an alternative with a new modernist aesthetic.

The Original Group f/64 consisted of –

• Ansel Adams
• Imogen Cunningham
• John Paul Edwards
• Sonya Noskowiak
• Henry Swift
• Willard Van Dyke
• Edward Weston

The first exhibition consisted of 80 photographs, including 10 by Adams, 9 each by Cunningham, Edwards, Noskowiak, Swift, Van Dyke and Edward Weston, and 4 each by Holder, Kanaga, Levenson and Brett Weston. Edward Weston’s prints were priced at $15 each; all of the others were $10 each. The show ran for six weeks.

Image Analysis

This image was taken using natural daylight with clouds blocking out lots of sunlight, which has created a dramatic backdrop in the sky. A wide angle lens was used to take this photograph as this is what was typically used by the romantics to capture landscape photographs. A large depth of field was most likely used as the whole of the image is sharp and in focus. A shutter speed of 1/60 – 1/150 was possibly used for this photograph due to no motion blurs being in the photograph. A medium ISO appears to have been used as the photograph is not grainy and is quite dark wit areas that are quite light. There is lots of texture in the photograph, from the trees in the foreground of the image to the running river.

The image has been taken in black and white which allows the audience to focus on the range of tones, textures and shapes in the image. There is a wide tonal range in the photograph ranging from the dark silhouettes of the mountains to the reflection of the river. There is no rule of thirds used in this photograph.

Romanticism 

In the late 1700s, numerous advances in the sciences led to new ideas about how the Earth was formed. A generation of landscape painters came to meet the demand, but also to create landscape art for its own sake. During the first half of the 1800s, landscape art became more realistic, even reaching levels of hyper-realism. In the second half of the century, photography began to have an impact on landscape painting and changed it forever.The movement was used in order to capture a specific purity of imagination of nature and spontaneity. Deep feeling and emotion are the establishments of the movement itself. Throughout the movement, there was a large expansion of the exotic and heroic ideas of the art where you could envision and escape.

Mood Board 

Links about Romanticism 

http://patricksmithphotography.com/blog/romanticism-and-realism-1800-1890-2/

https://www.photo-mark.com/notes/defense-romanticism/