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A2 Personal Investigation, AO1 Develop Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Botanical Experimentation

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I started experimenting with my images from photoshoot 5 in photoshop, taking inspiration again from the photograms in Chrystel Leas series ‘field studies’ with new material. I want to continue developing my interpretations of her work so i can include some in my final photobook. In this photoshoot i collected natural objects like plants and rocks and displayed them formally. In Photoshop I inverted the images so that the white background i photographed the objects on turned black. I then adjusted the hue of the images to create different variations of the same image. I also adjusted the levels in the image to produce the most aesthetically pleasing image with the most detail. After this process i edit the image in Lightroom and edit around the objects so that the background is the same colour, eliminating any lighting and marks that weren’t supposed to be there.

I particularly liked this image when i experimented with different colours as i think the multiple objects displayed makes the image more interesting to look at and creates more of an impactful image. I also chose to display these images together as i think they work best as multiple images together, rather than singles images by themselves, as it shows the contrast between the 4 images and the variations. It also shows how the colour of the main subject of the image can can the whole feeling of the image. For example, the red image makes me think the there is a negative concept and message behind the plants, whereas this effect is not created in the yellow edited image.

Displaying them together shows how there can be many variations of the same image, that portray different meaning through colour. In these images i think that the black background works well as it emphasises the repetition of the leaves and shapes going down in size and the different shape that each plant has. I also chose to photograph this image landscape, unlike my other images in this photoshoot as i wanted to display the different sizes of plant. I think this can then show plants at different stages of their life representing how the landscape is constantly changing and growing .

Anna Atkins’s cyanotype of the eagle fern (1843)

I like the effect created when I inverted this image and adjusted the levels without changing the hue in this image as I think it reflects the early photograms that botanists made with light. One example is Anna Atkins’ photograms of algae in 1843. I think it creates an image reflecting the ideologies of romanticism that isn’t shown as much in the images where i edited them have a black background. This is because the main subject is made to seem brighter because of the brighter blue background, creating a more delicate and fragile appearance the objects. I also like this effect as it makes the appearance of the image seem more scientific, like an X-ray analysing every aspect of what’s portrayed.

The flowers in the inverted image look as though they are slightly blurred. This is because the shadows i created when taking the photographs have turned whiter, blending with the actual objects, making it seem as it it’s slightly moving. This reflects Mandy Barkers images in her series ‘Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals’ where she moves the the plastic debris she’s photographing so it’s blurred and looks as though it floating in the sea. 

I continued experimenting with this image to see if i liked them in colour edits. I found that i do like them, but for a different reason to the first edit. These images have a more powerful, impactful appearance in comparison to the first edit. This is is because of the contrast between the dark black background with the bright colours of the plants and rocks. I also like these images as i think they grab the audiences attention quicker, and the repetition of the same image horizontally shows how variations of the same image can look very different.

I think i prefer the first two images other than the forth and fifth images as i think the last two look to edited and artificial. Although that was the intention of editing the in bright colours, the last two might be too edited. The first two are yellow and red and work as a juxtaposition to one another, whereas the last two don’t work as well as a contrast as they are both tones of blue. Overall I think these images work well as a series showing different colour edits. If i were to use them in my photobook i would arrange them in a different order so that the two tones of blue weren’t next to each other in the series.

Finally, i created different edits of images displaying just plants in them, also including some small flowers i found on La Motte. I think these are my favourite two images that i edited as i think they created a more delicate appearance that wasn’t there when rocks were displayed in the image. This is because rocks are bold and structured in comparison to the plants I’ve displayed. I first started editing these images by inverting them and not changing the hue to see if this image work as well as the previous image. I found that i liked this edit, creating a similar appearance to the the previous ones, reflecting the work of botanist Anna Atkins that some would consider the first female photographer. I developed them further and found that i preferred these images when i adjusted them in colour.

These three images are my favourite variations of colour edits. The first two are the same image edited in yellow and blue. I like the first image as it simplistic yet detailed at the same time. The detailed patterns created by the stem and flowers on the plant make the image more interesting, but it is still simplistic through the dark black background. This focuses all the attention to the object in the image.

I arranged the plants this way, with one placed vertically with the other coming out of it side, as it creates the appearance that it’s just one plant and i also wanted the stems and flowers to be pointing in different directions to create a more interesting shape. Having the plants in different directions makes them more emphasised against the black background as you are able to see all parts of the plant, rather than them being on top of one another.

The second image is edited in blue tones. I made the plant brighter in this image in comparison to the others as i thought it worked well with the blue background. Also in this image i decided that  instead of a black background i would experiment by having a more navy colour to complement the blue tones of the plant, which i think worked well. In this images the blurred lines are emphasised more which is an effect i like.

 

The third image is my favourite from the shoot. In addition to the plant, i also added small flowers that i found on La Motte on the left side of the image to give it another interesting aspect. I think this image worked well as a yellow edit, as the flowers i found were originally yellow, so the edit emphasises there natural colour making them stand out more. I also think that they complement the plant well as they are different tones of yellow, the plant being a more darker yellow with hints of brown. The same delicate effect is created taking inspiration from the ideologies of romanticism, similar to the first two images but i think this effect is emphasised with further with the flowers added. This is because of how the flowers all create different shapes against the black background, not one being the same. When photographing this image i tried to make it seem a though they were originally apart of the plant, but had fallen of due to the changing environment.

A2 Personal Investigation

Understanding A Photobook (Night Walk by Ken Schles)

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NIGHT WALK – KEN SCHLES

1. Research a photo-book (select one you have looked at previously in your project) and describe what story/ narrative the book is telling – its subject-matter, genre, style, approach etc.

2. Who is the photographer? Why did he/she make it? (intentions/ reasons) Who is it for? (audience) How was it received? (any press, awards, legacy etc.)

Photographer/Author : Ken Schles

”Twenty-five years after his seminal 1988 book, Invisible City, Ken Schles revisits his archive and fashions a narrative of lost youth: a delirious, peripatetic walk in the evening air of an irretrievable Downtown New York as he saw and experienced it. Night Walk is a substantive and intimate chronicle of New York’s last pre-Internet bohemian outpost, a stream-of-consciousness portrayal that peels back layers of petulance and squalor to expose the frisson and striving of a life lived amongst the rubble. Here Schles embodies the flâneur as Susan Sontag defines it, as a “connoisseur of empathy … cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes.” We see in Night Walk a new and revelatory Ulysses for the twenty-first century: a searching tale of wonder and desire, life and love in the dying hulk of a ruined American city.”

The book was originally published in 2014 however a second edition was published in 2016

3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book such as:

  • Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, sniff the paper.

The book feels of a high quality, its a fairly thick book with 162 pages, smells like any other book

  • Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.

White ink printed on a matte black paper

  • Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.

Landscape 17.3 x 23.2 cm

  • Binding, soft/hard cover. image wrap/dust jacket. saddle

The book is hardback and cloth bound with a dust jacket

  • Cover: linen/ card. graphic/ printed image. embossed/ debossed. letterpress/ silkscreen/hot-stamping.

The book has a black linen cover with an embossed title, covered by a dust jacket with one of the photographs from the book printed on it

  • Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.

The title night walk simply describes the way in which Ken Schles has taken his photographs, as the majority of the images in the book have been taken at night out on streets and public places in Downtown New York

  • Structure and architecture: how design/ repeating motifs/ or specific features develops a concept or construct a narrative.

The way in which the book has been designed so that the monochromatic images are printed on black matte paper, this gives all of the images a common aesthetic which gives the book quite a structure despite there being no obvious narrative or pattern throughout

  • Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.

The design and layout of images in this book is considerably random, with some images having borders, some images being full bleed 1 page spreads and some being full 2 page spreads. There doesn’t appear to be a pattern in which this occurs

  • Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.

The sequencing of photographs in the book doesn’t seem to have any sort of part to part narrative/ tell a specific story, I believe that most likely the photos are in sequence of Ken Schles’ route of walking, however I am unable to be sure of this and it definitely may not be the case

  • Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others.  Use of captions (if any.)

The text at the beginning of the book is a short piece of writing from Ken Schles and the book finishes with a relevant quote by T.S. Eliot. Both of these pieces of text are linked to the photographic content of the book and help to give understanding to the purpose of the photographs used.

 

A2 Personal Investigation, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Photoshoot 5- Botanical

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For this photoshoot I wanted to re-visit the idea of formally photographing plants and objects I find at Green Island, taking inspiration from Chrystel Lebas and Edward Salisbury and his botanical photography.  I wanted to create a scientific style to contrast with the landscape photography that would be in my photobook.

I first chose the image i thought were the most aesthetically pleasing and has the best lighting in them. I then displayed below unedited. I want to show the contest between the unedited to the edited. in this shoot gathered the objects i collected recently and tried to put them in different arrangements to find the one that with the best composition and patterns. I tried photographing single objects and finally started combining different objects together to create a contrast in the images.

I chose this as one of my final images to eventually start to experiment with because of the arrangement of plants. I tried many different ways of displaying these and found i they look best when i arranged them in size order. I think this makes the image look more scientific, similar to how a botanist would look at plants to analyse them. I think having them in size order shows how they were all at different points of growing, representing how the environment is constantly changing and evolving.

I also like this image due to the repetition of the stems creating vertical lines. Each plant then has different shapes and directions which their leaves are going, making all of the plants part of repetition but all being different.

The way the plants are displayed reflect botanists work. For example, in this photoshoot i took inspiration from Anna Atkins (16 March 1799 – 9 June 1871) who  was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph.

Anna Atkins learned directly from the scientist William Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the “photogenic drawing” technique (in which an object is placed on light-sensitized paper which is exposed to the sun to produce an image) and calotype. Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843.

“Looking at Atkins’s book today, what is most striking is not the outlines of the algae, however beautifully and delicately they crawl across the pages” (Joanna Moorhead, The Guardian)

I think the images i look interpret Atkin’s, but when i develop the images further and edit them i will make them look even similar to resemble photograms on light sensitive paper.

I also chose the two images below as my final images for this photoshoot as i think they also interpret the work of Anna Atkins well, especially when she looked plants in her photograms, as the stems and leaves are similar to my photographs. I also tried to arrange the plants in a similar way, vertical and spread out so you can see all parts of the plants, reflecting the work of botanists.

I like these two images as they work as single images and as a series. I think they work well displayed together as they are both simplistic images,and the contrast between the one plant and two is small, but changes the composition. The first image shows the plant displayed centered with equal space around the sides, this is so the whole plant is in the frame. I purposefully took the images so that shadows  were created underneath the plants so that there are a range of different tones from light to dark in the image. I also wanted to see what the shadows would look like when i edited them with the appearance of a photogram as botanists don’t display there plants with shadows as it’s printed on light sensitive paper.

I used the white background against the plants so that the detailed sections of the plant can be seen and emphasised when i edit them. I chose these plants to photograph as i like how the parts of the plants had dried and gone a brown tone as it created sharp edges to the ends. Also the flowers on the ends had dried as well creating an interesting circle pattern to contrasts with the rest of the image with sharp lines. I also displayed the image with two plants in it as i thought it had an interesting composition where the plants weren’t centered like in my other images.

Conclusion

Overall, i think i successfully took my images in the style of early botanists but i still want to develop these images more by experimenting with different edits and colours. I will then display these together to show different variations of the same image.

A2 Personal Investigation, AO1 Develop Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Photoshoot 4- Landscapes at Dusk

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I went back to La Motte at dusk and took 100 images. I then narrowed them to 36 images and displayed them below. I decided to go to La Motte at this time so my images have different lighting and tones in them. In Chrystel Lebas photos she often goes out to photograph at dusk (what the French call l’heure bleu ) when the world becomes more mysterious.  “I was fascinated by night itself, by the absence of light and the impossibility of photographing” Lebas told Nanda van den Berg, the director of the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. This inspired me to go out at this time the day to see how this would differ from the previous landscape image I’ve taken in this project.

I like this image I tried to emphasise the cool tones to heighten the elementalism relating to the ideologies of sublime. I think this particular image of mine definitely reflects that of the sublime, through the bold, structured shapes of the rocks with dark tones ranging rom brown to black. This combined with the sky which is a blue tone due to being taken at dusk, creates a mysterious and other-worldly appearance.

I wanted to show how the environment was changing by how the rocks had been warn down in comparison to archival images from one-hundred years ago. This is similar to how Lebas wanted to express how the environment was changing though how trees are growing, dying and re-generating themselves. I also like how the horizon is in the middle of the image creating a good composition, with detailed patterns and structures on the bottom half of the image which is juxtaposed with a simple sky with faint clouds. This is then connected with the rock in the centre of the image, being in both half of the image. The center rock is isolated from everything else in the image by sea and is shown by itself which contrasts to the other rocks in the image which are in groups together making the audiences eye going to the entered rock first. When editing this image i will see why it look like when i darken the clouds creating a more vast image.

I particularly like this image from my photoshoot as it has more context and meaning behind it than some of my other images. To me the cross in the center of the image could represent the peoples lives that have been lost on the beach, or the people that were buried in the island. This makes the image more mysterious and allows for the audience to interpret it however they want.

I also like the composition in this image as it is split into three sections , with the cross in the centre of them. The bottom part is th darker pat of the image, the dark brown tones contrasting to the light blue ones in the sea. The tones in the  bottom part of the image link to that on the horizon which creates a more aesthetically pleasing image. This is also because the blue tones in the sea complement the colour of the sky. The cross in the centre of the image is the point that the audience first looks at as it dark brown colour is contrasted against the sea behind it. I think image also links to the first final image in this shoot as they both have a subject in the sender of the image which draws the audience in, which is then surrounded by detailed rocks and blue tones. I think these two image would work well in a  photobook as they complement each and have simile aspects but aren’t too similar that your looking at the same image twice.

I tried to emphasise the blue tones in this image when photographing it at dusk and think I successfully did this. When editing this image i will try to further emphasises these blue tones and maybe even create more contrast between the tones in the sea compared to the sky.

Edits

When editing my final images for this shoot i decided that i wanted to emphasise the colours in the sky and darken the colours of the clouds to create image the reflected the ideologies of the sublime more. I use the Graduated filter when editing all my images and adjusted the exposure, contrast and temperature to create more stand out images.

To experiment with this image I darken the blue sky towards the bottom but kept some of the white clouds around the top of the image noticeable so there was more contrasting colours. I think that the edited blue sky against the white clouds emphasises them more than the original and makes the landscape seem more vast. I also darkened the rocks around the bottom of the image to make it seem later in the day than to when he image was actually taken to make the overall appearance more other-worldly and mysterious.

I also experienced my adjusted the colours and temperature in the photos to see if any of the other variation would make a better image. I changed the image so that there were more warm colours int he sky the cooler colours. Doig this created completely different atmosphere in each image compared to the original. These edits make the image look more other-worldly as the colours in the sky aren’t something you would see everyday, which perhaps makes the image more interesting to look at.

Overall, I think i prefer when the first edit where i emphassed the colour tones as it creates a more sublime image and reflects the work Crystal Lebas more, which is something that i wanted to do in this shoot.

In this image i edited in a similar way to my previous image to see how editing the same way would make the images different. I darkened sky in this image using the graduated filter so there was more of a separation between the sky and the sea. I think this makes the sections in the image more noticeable as their are all different colours. Also the darkened sky makes the landscape look more vast and dangerous like there’s a storm, looking more sublime than the original.

I also tried editing this image with a warmer tone for the sky adding more yellow into the landscape, which creates a different atmosphere in the image. It doesn’t look as natural as the original, taking away the natural blue colours and adding a more other-worldly appearance. I also tried brightening the sea in the right image to create more of a contrast between the dark sky but found that it looks too edited as the dark sky would reflect the sea in real life, which isn’t happening in this image.

As a final image I prefer the first image as I think the darkened sky and clouds fits well with the aesthetic and concept of the image as the cross in the centre is representing people who have passed away, addressing a sensitive and sad topic. To me it shows how even though there’s a storm in the picture and waves the sea, the cross still stands as it always has, perhaps saying something about the people who have died in the area.

I also chose this edit as one of my final images as I like the reflects that the rocks create on the sea and also how it’s showing a different atmosphere to my other dusk landscape. The sea is flat with little waves in it, which contrasts to the other images I took which have more of a dramatic appearance. To me, this image is more calm and peaceful through the flat sea and the soft colours in the sky going from light blue and showing a little of the sun thats just set. In my opinion this image reflects more picturesque ideologies, compared my other images that look more sublime as its not as dramatic and vast and emphasises the beauty in the landscape more. When editing this image i used the graduated filter and brightened the sky a little and emphases the softer colours like the pale blue and orange.

A2 Personal Investigation, Analysis

Image Analysis

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Rothiemurchus in Scotland

This photograph was taken in Rothiemurchus, Scotland, linking to concepts of sublime photography and focusing on nature as being the main subject.. The Rothiemurchus estate is one of the largest surviving areas of ancient woodlands in Europe where the average age of the Scots pines exceeds 100 years with some more than 300 years old. Le bas’ panoramic landscape photograph expands what is seen by the audience of the scene. The underlying story of this photograph to me is the detrimental  effects that mankind have had on the environment over the past years. This photograph was taken in 2012 which I think is Lebas’ way of expressing to people how mankind is effecting the environment today and is still very much a relevant issue. The way this photo was documented makes it seem to me as though she has stumbled across this on her walk which adds the to shocking nature of it. The surrounding trees are perfectly in tack but the tree in the centre of the image  is completely snapped in half on it’s side. This makes the audience question why it’s like this and creates mystery behind the scene.

The surrounding trees are all tall and straight, some going out of the frame on the left side of the image which adds to the contrast of the standing trees to the broken one. As well as this, most of the green tones in this image are on the surrounding trees, the broken one being a light brown tone which is different from the rest of the image, further emphasising the contrast of the two elements in the photo.   This follows on from Lebas’ environmental series looking at how the environment has changed over 90 years in comparison to Salisbury’s photograph. This image in comparison to Salisbury’s is shocking which I think emphasises the effect of climate change. “My photograph shows more trees than Salisbury’s black and white plate. Mark Spencer explained that these could have been growing thoughout the 90 years surrounding the older tree seen in the center of the image. Thus showing me that in order to understand that habitat one must understand its history.” So Lebas’ true meaning behind this image in particular was to show how landscape changes over time, portraying new trees that have grown over the 90 years, and the older tree falling apart on its side, portraying how trees are growing, falling apart and re-generating themselves.

The loss of plant and animal species due to human activities have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history, increasing the risks of abrupt and irreversible changes to ecosystems. (www.anthropocene.info) When Lebas revisited the areas that Salisbury did she found that species that were there over 90 years ago weren’t there anymore, reflecting her views about species going extinct within her photography. The book is “an investigation of a landscape that now has such a heavy human footprint as to no longer be “natural” in the way Salisbury would have understood the term. ” stated in his article in The Guardian. I think this is true as the landscape she visited has changed so much that a whole plant species has gone extinct. This reflects the ideologies of anthropocene where atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic and other earth system processes are now altered by humans, which is a concept I think Lebas is trying to represent.

I also think many of her photographs  greatly link to the ideologies by philosopher Edmund Burke in ‘Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)’ where he talks about the thrill and danger of confronting untamed Nature and its overwhelming forces. This image displays nature as untamed through the broken tree in the centre of the image and the towering trees filling most of the photograph, nature overwhelming the senses. “Lebas sees her works as referring to the Romantic tradition, citing Casper David Friedrich and notions of the sublime as key influences. With images of escape, wilderness and the grandeur of nature, her practice relates some of the main tenets of Romanticism to photography and raises significant questions about how the contemporary (urban) viewer engages with nature.” (Deborah Schultz, Portfolio Catalogue – Contemporary Photography in Britain). I can see how Lebas’ work takes inspiration from the 19th-century Romantic landscape painter Casper David Friedrich through the tones she’s emphasises to portray vast nature as well as the bright backgrounds against the darker subject, creating a romanticised aesthetic.

 

Caspar David Friedrich Cairn in Snow 1807, Midday 1821-22

Sean O’hagan thinks that “Lebas’s images have a kind of heightened elementalism. She uses a panoramic camera and often shoots at dusk when the light quality in these still, quiet places can be almost otherworldly” (Sean O’Hagan, Photography reviewer, The Guardian). I agree with this statement as i think her use of cool dark tones adds to to an elementric quality. Elementalism refers to ‘worship of the natural elements of earth, air, water, and fire.’  and i think Lebas’ photography  has an awareness of spirituality in living things. In this image the way she’s accentuates the patterns in the dark green trees against the bright sky makes them seem alive and spiritual in comparison to the broken tree. Also the way she shoots at dusk emphasises the mystical atmosphere and shadows that consumes the image adding to the elementalism.

I agree that Lebas “alerts people to the changes wrought by man and the climate on the landscape, than by drawing them in through these photographs to consider how fragile it has become.” (Liz Jobey, Photography reviewer, Natural Histories, Weekend magazine) to an extent. Although she does present nature being ‘fragile’ and vulnerable to changes of  human activity, she also presents it as vast and powerful through her use of cool tones and boundless landscapes. Overall she presents  her underlying message that the changes in natural landscapes are due to humans and climate change and portrays nature as immense and beautiful at the same time.

A2 Personal Investigation, Analysis

Understanding Photobook

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Field Studies by Chrystel Lebas

The narrative behind this photo book is the ‘grim reality of climate change leaving it’s marks on the landscape.’ She looks at the work of Sir Edward James Salisbury between 1925 and 1933 in Scotland and looks at how the landscape has changed over 90 years looking closely at botany and identifying locations he visited.

For example, she walked around the envions of the village of Arrochar in Argyll and Bute in the Trossachs National Park searching for Salisbury’s viewpoints. She observed how the sea appears to have risen dramatically in comparison to Salisbury’s black and white photograph. Salisbury was interested in the Scirpus [Bolboschoenus]  maritimus species that was now abundant in this particular place. A car park had been built on the same spot and the course of the road had been altered and now it seems that the species has disappeared.

She made these observations and documented them in her photobook, using panoramic images to show the changed landscape. Each chapter in her photobook she re-visits particular places that she found in Salisbury’s photographic records and his notes.

Chapter 6 in Field Studies changes from the archival and panoramic images and looks at ‘Plant Portraits or Weeds & Aliens Species’. The chapter starts with a quote from Salisbury, “We can in fact only define a weed, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the well-known definition of dirt as matter out of place. What we call a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it” . Lebas took inspiration from the way Salisbury documented species by uprooting them and placing them directly onto paper or fabric to photograph them by using  photogenic paper in a darkroom to produce her own interpretations of his work. A few of the chosen plants are part of the species that Salisbury researched extensively and described in his book ‘Weeds and Aliens’.  The filtration values and exposure times are carefully annotated beneath each photogram.

http://www.chrystellebas.com/Re-visiting/re-visiting.htm

Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, sniff the paper.

The book feels quite big as it has nearly 200 pages and is nearly A4, making it quite long compared to other phonebooks. It feels new and well put together through the brown card, making it have a strong front and back cover.

 Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.

The front and back cover are made from brown card and the spine of the book has canvas around giving the book a more authentic look. One of Chrystel Lebas colour images is displayed on the bottom half of the book and the way its printed makes it look as though its been stuck there by hand barbecue of the contrasting material to the card. One of Edward Salisbury’s black and white archival imagery is printed in the top right , the brown card behind the image replacing the whites.

Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.

The size of the book is just bigger than A4 and is portrait. There is a total of 184 pages with a contents page at the front explaining the different chapters of the book e.g the different places Lebas re-visited and the pieces of writing included by other people.

Cover: linen/ card. graphic/ printed image. embossed/ debossed. letterpress/ silkscreen/hot-stamping.

It has a cover made for brown card, with canvas on the side of the book. The image on the front appears as though its been stuck on giving the photo book a handmade look. The archival image has been printed straight onto the card, Le bas telling the reader that the bigger image thats been stuck is her image, rather than the archival image.

Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.

The title of the book is ‘Field Studies: Walking through Landscapes and Archives’. On the first page of the book it states ‘The Sir Edward James Salisbury Archive Re-visited: observing environment change in British Landscape’ which is literal. It indicates the scientific nature of the book.

Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?

The story of the photo book is looking at the changes in the landscape over 90 years and re-visiting the places that Edward Salisbury documented. Its looks at his landscape imagery as well as his scientific and botanical images. She looks at how factors such as climate change effect the environment.

Structure and architecture: how design/ repeating motifs/ or specific features develops a concept or construct a narrative.

She displays her images in chapters looking at one specific place and then in the next chapter going to another creating a journey travelling to different areas. The end of the book is like an evaluation of the objects she found there which is then followed by three pieces of text by Dr. Mark A. Spencer, Bergit Arends, and Liz Wells.

Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.

Lebas uses her panoramic landscape imagery on most of the pages on the first couple of chapters in the book. She uses fold out pages so the images can be full page, she then contrasts her images to Salisbury’s from the same location so you can see the effects of time. She writes alongside the image where it was taken, information about the place and what was found there. Chapter 6- Plant portraits or  Weeds & Aliens Studies displayed some of the plants and weeds she found in these locations formally with no writing. This contrasts with the start of the book that has a lot of writing.

Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.

She uses the juxtaposition of Salisbury’s archival imagery with her new panoramic images to show the effects of time and climate change on the environment

Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others.  Use of captions (if any.)

Her photobook include pieces of writing by others such as Dr. Mark A. Spencer, Bergit Arends, and Liz Wells alongside her writing and photos all linking to nature and the changing environment. This makes the book a lot more informative than other photo books as a lot of it is writing informing the reader about the places she’s visited and what she found there in comparison to Salisbury.

“My work is increasingly focusing on these particular issues around the environment and how we, human beings, influence it, however sometimes it is more complex then it appears and that is why we need science to step in and demonstrate the urgencies we face. In my photography and film works I am pointing out at the issues, hopefully engaging with a wider audience to share my findings and at the same time asking questions that might just provoke a reaction or a dialogue. My photographs are accompanied with GPS coordinates so that the locations can be retraced back and observed years after my photographs and Salisbury’s were taken, hence the recording of potential change in the landscape will continue.”

A2 Personal Investigation

Book Composition – First Draft

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I decided to design my book using the software Blurb, this was because it presented me with a huge variety of different template in which I could easily layout my images in. When designing the book I made sure to constantly refer back to my photography book reference, Jessica Backhaus, A Trilogy. This gave me a huge inspiration for my page layouts where I tried to utilise the negative space which surrounded the images effectively, using a matte colour to fill it in instead. Overall the book led me to use my four main shoots which focused on the development of consumerism. Using the three topics of producing, consuming and waste as my main influence throughout, narrowing down my original thousand strong image selection down to about fifty. Here is my current composition for the book:

What I really wanted to put across from my layout of the book was a narrative, this would allow for me to tell a political storey through the narration of various images divided into separate categories  that could be analysed and viewed in relation to the rest of images in that topic. To begin with I experimented with about six individual pages layouts, presenting a broader way in which I could compose the photos taken, such as full page spreads, double-page spreads and boxed in imagery. I wanted to leave a few spaces that I would be able to place text in such as my essay and titles for pages and photos.

Some of the issues I am having though consist of the images losing quality as they are enhanced, leading me to have to consider alternative design layouts for their pages. Another issue is the flow of the book which I am struggling to order images in order of relevance to the pages before them, as I want to tell a narrative which is becoming harder to do as I progress through the book. My final issue is the composition of information pages, as I didn’t want the writing to overpower the pictures on the same page and had to re-design blank areas multiple times in order to come to some sort of satisfactory result.

A2 Personal Investigation, AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas

Photo-book Investigation – Retracing Our Steps by Bression and Ayesta

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Image result for bression and ayesta retracing our steps bookThe book ‘Retracing Our Steps’ by Carlos Ayesta and Guillaume Bression looks at the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011.  The photographers have made regular visits to the ‘no-man’s-land’ and have created a book that consists of mix posed situations with a documentary approach.  The photographers asked former residents to come back to their original environment to see how much these formerly ordinary places have changes.  The subjects were asked to act as if nothing had happened, and to behave naturally.  The resulting narrative in this book is a harrowing story of how things can change over time and become so massively impacted from unexpected events which are out of control.  The photographers have made this to “show what the inhabitants have to face when they come back to the place where they used to live”, which shows the the audience of this book is partly the previous inhabitants, and partly the rest of the world to shed some light on how disastrous the impact was on the area.  The book won Bression and Ayesta the New Discovery Award presented by Le 247 Gallery and has been exhibited at festivals such as the Athens Photo Festival.

The book is finished with a half-cloth hardcover and measures 23 x 23 cm.  In total it has 152 pages with 102 colour illustrations.   The photo-book consists of full-bleed double page spreads as well as photographs presented centrally in the page along with text with some off-centre photographs.  There are also smaller photographs included in some pages to create a sense of typology within the narrative.  The photographs in a full-bleed are intended to seem imposing to the viewer and are closer to the front of the book in order to seem bold and to draw in the viewer.  The photographs presented with text are to give the viewer some context about the subjects and their situations as well as to create smaller narratives within the photo-book, it also helps the viewer to see that the destroyed Fukushima area was once the home to thousands.  The title ‘Retracing Our Steps’ reflects the idea behind the book very well as Bression and Ayesta travel back to the no-go-zone to show where the impact started and where the inhabitants are now.

 

A2 Personal Investigation

Experimentation With Images – Gradient

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Before I finished with the design of the book I decided to fit in one more experimental edit. This would once again explore how the use of editing techniques could alter the portrayal of an image, using various colours to do so. I want to use the gradient because of its effects of changing the overall tone of a photo, whether it be bronze silver or two contrasting colours, something I found to be interesting when exploring conventions of the camera. Here I would be using the software Adobe Photoshop again due to its huge variety of tools available for use when looking at techniques not commonly used. This is the process of the development regarding the images used for experimentation:     After I had experimented with a variety of different gradients upon certain pictures I then selected the best photos that used the gradient the most effectively. I wanted to change the atmosphere of each image to a more surreal and unusual portrayal that used metallic colours to highlight certain aspects of them. Here are my favorite outcomes for gradient use: When looking over the images I found that I really liked the see-through metallic film placed over the photos, as it gave them an tinted and old effect that I hadn’t seen in any of my previous work. Accompanied through the slightest change of colour tone, the effects of the gradient seems to product abstract and surreal results that overall I was really happy with.