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breaking the rules of reality:possibilty, dependecy and circumstances

After much research I believe personally that reality is the form of three situations, possibility, dependency and circumstances within action.

Possibility to me is the chance of reality. Reality is not a given or something you are able to predict. Such as being older than someone does not stop the younger person from dying first. These harsh truths show the possibility of we do not know what effects, illness or situations we will come through during our life. Possibility is also a large part of chance, chance is something uncontrollable, and no one can know what the chance of something happening is. Because of this I think it would be interesting to capture some scenarios that capture how everything in life is a risk and matter of timing. this could be a balloon before it burst or perhaps the weather before a storm or even adding my concept of political emotions showing a narrative of something getting evicted or possible literally falling down. When I researched It come up within many fast shutter speed shots in order to cpature the action a apiece has. However I could focus on the side of nature and the beauty nature holds, And the chance something incredible would happen in nature, this could be a sun set or rise, people having twins and many occasions that would not be expected to happen in peoples realities. 

This has forever been an ongoing concept, because of this I believe using achieve pictures and editing them in such a way to demonstrates the circumstance of reality would be incredibly interesting.Dependency is the relationships people have within each other and how their actions cause a dependent reaction which causes the reality. This is a sense of action and reaction. dependency also has strong implementations of a weight. This weight could be the cause of emotional trauma, political instances or a literal weight and harsh imapct. This is a clear demonstration of the balancing of nature and the relationship of trust. I could use this narrative to track people and one person calling and showing clear demonstrations of trust and someone being dependent. however I could enlarge this through a large political instance of who everyone in the world is infact dependent on eeach other. We as a society cannot and will not be able to functions without eachers, as they help with medicine ,housing, money, economy but most importantly we need ot look after other. I think a large ignorance of dependency and a fault at our core is ignorance. How the western world ignorances the cries of those in need in the south and east.

circumstances. This is the godly benefit of being born in a circumstance better than others. Circumstance is also the determinate of where you are when and how this could lead onto the causation of what happens to you. No one has the ability to control who their family is or where stye are born and raised. Because of this many negative an unhappy relationships are formed,this could be caused but he environment people are in or they way in which people treat them.  Circumstances comes into the attitude of nature and fire very well into political landscape as it is an area governmentally controlled differently as you would like. Because of this many people, including some people in my family feel as though this is where they are not meant to be, Is this fate or a disappointing circumstance of action.

plan for shoot:

I want to create a alternate reality. To do so I will create an atmosphere that does not really exists, and capture actions that only happened for a s second and not what people would usually focus upon. tThe editing will be highly conceptual and forms ways in which is unconventional to portray the landscape itself. I will use my idea of circumstances by taking images where I was raised,This is my home, which I did not have a choice over but luckily the circumstances was not negative. However I think dependency goes hand in hand in capturing a reality of a place.  trust and dependency is usually something seen within people, however I think I could relate this t landscape and nature and also further expand this to the power if nature of man itself. lastly I want to capture possibility and capturing rare photos us using fast shutter speed and such. This will be very different from my family shoot, however still based in my family home, but will relate more to political landscapes through these conceptual ideas and editing processes.

Photographer Research

 ‘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/

Rules Of Technicality – Henrik Malmström

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

breaking the rules: reality, planning for shoot

Development:

For my shoot I decided I would go down the road of peter Watkins ideas and I think they Are more possible to communicate in the environment I am in. However I do think It would beneficial if I did present a certain narrative and experimented within a minority of representations seen within school,Or even an experimentation with the prediction fo what will happen in the future, how and the Over not everyone will be interested or know about these events as they would be subject relevance to me and not of relevance to those people I am studying.For my second shoot I want to take a possible studio tablo type shoot and present political  issues such as (hospital in jersey, or political governmental issues in jersey).

 

Shoot images:

 

 

Edits:

Within this image I wanted to capture  a simplicity and delicacy to the image in order to mimic the young and innocent age of my brother at the time. I thought I would enhance the photo by using as tape as this too develops a story and narrative to the image and holds past realities and truths. This narrative is highly interesting to me and is purposes the possible narrative of my family never having me in it. It shows the relationships there before myself and me and the destruction of the truth and reality of what my family was previous.

I used this image as i had no connection with any of the people within this image. These were my grandparents when they were young who I never met.

I believe the  editing within this images purposes a question of the relativity of relationships and when they are formed and how they can easily be broken. The reality is of the division is a connotation of the physical emotional differences all of these people had.

As previously said my main inspiration or this first breaking the rules shoot was inspired by peter Watkins. I thought I would focus on the reality of my parents lives and hw what i think their lives are currently only consists f me being in it, However the majority of their life was with me absent from it. Because of this is used images of their wedding day and my brother who is 4 years older then myself. I wanted to use the same editing technique with repeating different sections of images throughout. I decided the majority of my images work more successful when in black and white as they concentrate on the character themselves. I have recently read the book ‘Camera lucida’ by  Stuart hall and he said something about photography that stuck with me. It is that the punctum is never the most obvious sections within an image. I believe that within my images This power is often metonymic, this means t be that the thinking eye will dd something to the image  itself, this could be a false sense  of reality and adding your own narrative to an image. What a stubbornly sees is different small section, with showing only these small contexts of the images it allows chemical reactions t develop an essence of the wound and memory from the photo itself. What we cannot be repeated but only transformed but only repeated under the instances of insistence. With moving image you aren’t allowed to shut your eyes as the movement goes quickly and you are unable to see the details. But within this shoot I want to discover a different image every-time  I look at the same photo. I believe the concept of reality in this shot is the different truths and stories each would tell who are in the same image. Images such as this also question the future of what will happen, as said previously you cannot predict the future as what you think will be true can ch age in an instance. I will further develop the concept of instances and who a small change can effect the future and impact of a person or being. 

Manipulation response

Noemie Goudal Edits


Using the lasso tool, quick selection tool and eraser tool, I cut round the selection of the water tanks and placed it over the image of the beach.

I changed the whole image to black and white and decreased the contrast to give more grey tones in order to resemble Goudal’s style.

In another edit, I attempted to use the same techniques but showcased in a different natural environment. I discovered this archival image that demonstrates the superficial deposits of the sand dunes of St Ouen, Jersey that have been left for millions of years.

I placed the building as if it was emerging from the sand showing the significance of nature over man-made architecture. I altered the photo to black and white and decreased contrast like I did with my first image.

Steve McCurry Edits

Before

For this image, I took the tower and cloned it in order to remove the negative space caused by the sky. This gives the image a more industrial feel due to the repetition of large buildings.

 

Next, I selected the area of rocky floor and increased contrast as well as decrease brightness in order to give a more intense feel. This emphasises the rubble and mossy sections.

I selected the areas of rust that appear on the tank on the right side of the image. Increasing the saturation emphasises the orange colour.

I finally altered the brightness and contrast for the whole image in order to make the previous changes more natural.

After

Before

After

I increased the saturation of the rusty pipe that appears in the forefront to shows its significance in relation to the seascape in the background.

Using the patch tool, I removed a black dot that was featured in the sky that i found distracting.

The Rule of Technicality – Henrik Malmstrom

Henrik Malmstrom is a Finnish photographer currently living and working in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Malmstrom self-published his first book in 2010, titled On Borrowed Time‘.  He is the co-founder and curator of the Müllkellergalerie which is a premium art gallery located in a garbage room in Hamburg, Germany.  Malmstrom has won over 15 awards since 2008 as well as being shortlisted for the best photobook of the year in 2016.

I think that Malmstrom has a very interesting approach in his book ‘A Minor Wrongdoing‘ in which he photographs subjects at night with a very high ISO to create grainy and underexposed photographs.  In this book Malmstrom would photograph people that he saw from the window of his living room using a cheap digital camera. He would create the effect of a surveillance camera by setting the ISO abnormally high.  The book that came from this replicates a messy police report archive with the grainy monochromatic photographs creating a sense of abstraction due to their unconventional appearances. The photographs in this book were taken between 2011-2014, Malmstrom’s synopsis of ‘A Minor Wrongdoing’ says that the project records “the last remains 
of street life in an urban area that is currently undergoing
fierce gentrification after recent official law enforcement
against street-based prostitution”.

I think that Malmstrom’s defiance of the rule of technicality is very interesting and unique as it creates a composition that most photographers would not even attempt to make.  Whilst having an abstract and unconventional aesthetic in this project, Malmstrom has managed to make this work still look good whilst breaking the rules of technicality. I plan on taking inspiration from Malmstrom’s work when exploring breaking the rule of technicality as I think I can successfully combine documentary/street photography along with this style to create something that I would not usually attempt.

Analysis

In this photograph, Malmstrom has used natural lighting, or the lack of it, in order to create a very grainy and grey photograph which replicates the effect of a surveillance camera. Within this photograph there is not a wide tonal range due to the grey and surveillance nature of the photograph which creates an almost old-fashioned effect within the photograph. The photograph is not a very high contrast either due to the dark setting that Malmstrom is going for, but the low contrast works for the style of photograph. Malmstrom will have used a shutter speed of around 1/50 – 1/100 with a very high ISO of 1600 or 3200 as the idea of this project was to capture grainy photographs of people in the dark. Technical quality was not a key aim of this photograph, which can be seen, as Malmstrom aimed to create these technically incorrect photographs. The high ISO allows for the grainy texture to be created which adds a lot of character to the photographs and adds to the dark and mysterious setting.

There is no colour in this photograph – only black and white. This black and white theme further conveys the theme of surveillance and discretion within the photographs. The mixture of the high ISO grainy photograph with the black and white effect means that the tones are also very dark and mysterious – these dark tones make the setting have a sinister and secretive vibe meaning there could be more to what meets the eye with this subject. The grainy texture makes the photograph seem as if it was printed poorly – which again breaks the technical rules of photography, but this grainy texture fits in to further push the idea that this is a mysterious photograph. The eye is immediately drawn to the cigarette being lit in the subjects mouth as it sparks to be the whitest part of the photograph, contrasting from the regular grey tones without. This white spark illuminates the side of the subjects face to give a slight sense of the subjects identity without giving too much away, leaving more mystery in the photograph. The subject is also placed along one of the vertical lines of the rule of thirds – this may be intentional but also may not be, either way it makes the photograph more aesthetically pleasing for the viewer. There is not much of a 3D setting to the photograph due to the dark and grey tones with little shadowing.

This photograph was taken from Malmstrom’s book ‘A Minor Wrongdoing‘ in which he photographs subjects at night with a very high ISO to create grainy and underexposed photographs.  All of the subjects within the book were photographs from Malmstrom’s living room window which adds to the sense of mysteriousness and surveillance.  On the final outcome of the book in which this photograph was placed, it replicated a messy police report archive which shows that the surveillance theme conveyed throughout the photographs is intentional.

I think that through this photograph and the other photograph from his book  ‘A Minor Wrongdoing‘, Malmstrom is trying to question whether the technicalities and conventions of photography and society that we are supposed to conform to really matter in the grand scheme of things.  I think this because Malmstrom is photographing unaware subjects whilst they are in their own world, not worrying about conforming to society’s standards or trying to impress people.  Through doing this Malmstrom is showing what people are really like when they are not around and so how we should be all the time.  Malmstrom further presses this idea by not sticking to the normal conventions of photography through grainy, low contrast photographs caught with an abnormally high ISO.

 

second artist: and Cristina de Midde

Cristina de Middel  is a Spanish  documentary artist who is currently living and working in Mexico. She has self published many of her works and has focused on many different projects such as the southern Africa space program . Her work is critically acclaimed and she had sold out many of her books ad  works across the world. She has been nominated for many huge photography prizes all around the globe. Her work is an ongoing investigation to focus on the ambiguous relationship of what is the truth. She blends her views od documentary and conceptual phoqogorhic practises, she does this through practising with the reconstruction of archetypes and her found burr of what is reality and what is fiction. Her photojournalistic gaze as an outsider allows her to create views which she can presently see within the landscape she is is innovate with her work creates critically acclaimed series , such as the image above which focuses on a failed program for space. this could come onto terms of predicting the future of presenting a false sense or recreating an occasion that is happening elsewhere in the world. Her stages reenactments and obscure narratives allow a continuously interesting new body of work. Her work is that of fiction but can serve as a subject relative to todays world. Her photography can work just as well as being fact as it highlights our expectations of how reality is flawed. Her exhibitions are international and have won the prize for infinity award and the international centre award. 

To me the image above has a child like sense of a false sense of reality and the hope and childlike ignorance a child has. This is mirrored through the handmade costume and the stance which conveys power and confidence. The angle of the photo being a low shot also attributes power to the man, it shows a confidence and his gaze perhaps highlights a longing for a reality that will probably never happen. The atmosphere to which they are surrounded is relative to the location of Africa and them having a space program in such a poor area. The light tonal colours of the outfit creates such a strong juxtaposition to the atmosphere itself and shows the artists disagreement of political standards and corruption within the government structure of their properties. It shows a false reality to the people of Africa and thinking they have an opportunity to be part of this space program but it is not a possibility.

I believe this piece is very interesting in how to shows a false reality .I believe that the person  look secure, and composed, and how this is not an accurate scenario to someone who too would be faced with many bugs such as this. The image contains a beauty within these horrible bugs that would scare many people. This image symbolises the death and ignorance and suffering people have to live with.Her images purpose a sense of reality throughout he false tablo images which are obviously set up but insure a deep meaning. it interests me the way in which all of her work contains and obscure image with an equally as obscure narrative story within it too.

Midde had a realisation that her work did not have enough impact. because of this she stopped believing in raising awareness by pointing out the problem. She wanted to start a debate within her images and see how many different approaches she could take in order to start the making of a solution. She has said ‘ straight documentary photography is about imposing an opinion (that comes from mass media’s agenda) and the audience has very little to add to it, and the dimension of the problem makes it impossible to react’Because of this imposing a different reality were she promotes a solution and not the problem itself there is a new dynamic and an essence of courage within her work.The language employed when searching the chronicle of the world is outdated, the reaction is no longer the same. People are no longer impressed by the document itself and some contexts needs to be provided. Midde wanted to ‘include my opinion and my vision of things in the way I try to explain the world.’ The inspiration of her work is generating a context from newspapers, magazines and then sharing it she portrays as a selfish process. Midde stays on the surface because she believes this is the most interesting subject to a topic, due to it being a visible concept. It enables people to see a problem and understand it a-lot better . This is how her work presents a new reality to so many because it is not meant to show a problem, but easily present a solution.

Breaking the rules planning: reality

Research and notes from lewis bush article:

What I was inspired by through Lewis bush’s ‘eight rules’.  The only way to tell them is to take a few risks, break all the rules and pioneer a new way of seeing the world. posing his subjects, manipulating his prints, and often becoming dangerously over-involved in his stories.But documentary is not journalism,#1 The Rule of Objectivity.#2 The Rule of Audience: audiences, of shaping public opinion and perhaps in the process shaping policy.“undermine this hierarchical, class-based relationship between images and their audience”.#3 The Rule of Manipulation, this forbids photographers from using digital editing to manipulate the meaning of their images.very stage of the photographic process is a manipulation, and is open to no less egregious misrepresentations.“I see propaganda and reality as two sides of the same coin,” she says. “Propaganda is an essential part of everyday life in North Korea, and because of that a reality in itself.”#4 The Rule of Reality“creative treatment of actuality”vents which were then, and still are, yet to transpire blend of fact and fiction “They had been forced to wear makeup and my informants had described it perfectly: bright red lips, pink cheeks and blue eye-shadow.”#5 The Rule of Technicality, Lacking the clarity of a conventional documentary image, her work hints at the uncertainty engulfing the country at a time of change.“It was about responding spontaneously to the events around me,”#6 The Rule of Ownership, His interest in these images, he says, lies in the fact that “the people who are running the show, that’s the stuff they’re working with.”#7 The Rule of the Camera“I have always understood, or at least attempted to understand, the close communion one must have with story. When the story is served by all the elements, an opening up of technique and creative possibility in how that story gets told is laid out for you.”“The body is becoming part of this new informational economy,” says Orton, whose visceral reaction to a utilitarian image is a reflection on the relationship between living bodies and their representations.#8 The Rule of Rule BreakingWhen it comes to working on sensitive topics and with vulnerable subjects, the expectations and standards have never been higher.But good practice, ethical practice, more often stems not from any formal rules of documentary

Reality: Rule number 4

I thought reality was such a interesting concept that would allow me to question its rules in many circumstances.  To my reality lies between three main concepts. I believe tablo photography and a staged sense of altered reality would question the proposition of what reality is.  I believe there is a sense of trust seen within reality and people believe what they expect to be reality. I could change this by doing a documentary series in a way which is not expected and also a specific small angle of what is actually the truth. E.g a study of school with the reality of how people are treated and what happens behind the scenes and when not at school for learning. My second aspect of intrigue is the concept of predicting the future, and the power of invention and to from something which is not currently real. This allows a sense of lies of perhaps what people would want in the future e.g hope. This could also incorporate into Tablo photography as it would be set up in order to create a frame that has not officially happened.I could do this through thinking of a political concept or and environmental impact, so predicting who will win the election, what changes will be soon developed to St Helier, or the deterioration of the environment. As this has not happened but the plausibility caused produce a sense fo reality to readers. This could possibly be a recreation of something that has happened or started to happen elsewhere, war, poverty and such. This creates a sense of awareness to people who are oblivious in rich areas such as jersey. My last inspiration Is the appearance of a false reality seen within an appearance or a sense of personality, this could be developed further into someones culture and what is expected of them to look and act and Additionally how someone presents themselves, through styles, fashion and makeup.  I believe this is a-lot more apparent especially with  young teenagers trying to change who they are in order to be and create someone who they are not. So creating a false sense of reality.

research: when searching the word ‘reality’ through the concept of photography many images come up which a-lot of documentary photography in order to tell the ‘truth’ Much of which is very harsh and hard hitting and show people a scenario that is not particularly nice to look at. Such as seen within this image you can see a young injured girl who instead of people getting help they photography her for story to encourage help which they could have given. The camera is constantly manipulated and everyones truths will always be different. Because I believe every photo-lies in some manner i think to create something that is not reality will be relatively straight forward when i know my concept of my shoot.

To further what concept I should really narrow into i will do further research to see which photographers are too inspired by how a narrative is told and how lying further does not change how the camera already shows a small part of a large story anyway.

Artist Research’s – Breaking the rules: Manipulation

Noemie Goudal


Noémie Goudal is a French artist who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010 with an MA in Photography and lives and works in Paris. Noémie Goudal investigates truth and fiction through the use of layered photos of quiet, mysterious landscapes which she combines with elements of modernist architecture.

Goudal’s style is reminiscent of digital manipulation however they are in fact analogue photos which have been precisely shot and stuck to cardboard pieces to form an abstract sculpture. Goudal places these sculptures in natural landscapes often challenging the weather conditions. The final works generate tension due to the out of place proportions in the image which are only revealed in very subtle ways.

Despite Goudal’s fictional style, the bunkers in this image are real WW2 bunkers found on Normandy beach. Noemie’s style has lead viewers to believe this building is fake since many of her photos contain paper backdrops. This allows the viewer to question the reality of her images. The origin of this image, named “Combat” provided an interest to Goudal inspiring her to research geomorphic architecture, architecture that has a direct link to nature in order to imitate or draw our attention to it, leading her to create her own inspired series titled “Observatoires”.

Image Analysis


The image “Observatoire IV” was made in relation to a series of photographs depicting architectural constructs. Through the collection of images, both captured with her own camera and taken from the internet, Goudal puts fragments together on her computer and prints them on paper to place onto cardboard cutouts.

“What I like is that it’s not clear anymore what the function of these new buildings is. I see them as a sculpture, they become a different thing”

Goudal implies the relationship between the land and the manmade despite the absence of people in the photos.

Her images are taken in natural lighting on overcast days where her sculptures overpower their vast and empty landscapes. The tonal range shows the image as mainly grey hues although the photo is also presented in a black and white form. Increasing the contrast causes the presence of the building in the centre to become stronger where fold lines in the paper can also be seen when looking closely.

The sharpness of the image results from a fast shutter speed paired with a small aperture yet prevents the production of noise in the image so that it is still clear.

The illusion of reality is furthered by the addition of the reflection in the foreground which amplifies the size and significance of the manmade structure over nature.


Steve McCurry


McCurry’s career started in photojournalism, a field based around the truth and integrity of an image. Evidence of manipulation in this field, beyond standard colour correction and processing, can end a photographer’s career if they are discovered. Steve McCurry has worked on many assignments with the National Geographic, an organisation that does not “condone photo manipulation for editorial photography”. They prevent this from occurring by receiving all the raw files for every assignment in order to check images and complete colour correction themselves.

McCurry’s work has covered extreme armed conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq War, Lebanon Civil War, and the Afghan Civil War. He has risked his life on many occasions in order to capture his images, he was almost drowned in India and he survived an airplane crash in Yugoslavia.

McCurry’s work has adapted with the times where he now refers to himself as a “Visual Storyteller”. Many of his recent works have been shot for his own enjoyment, where he is able to show more freedom in the editing of personal projects.

Part of the NPPA Code of Ethics states:

“While photographing subjects, do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound [referring also to video] in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.”

~ McCurry enhances his images by manipulating the saturation of colours which makes the photo more stronger to the eye.

McCurry concentrates on the toll war takes on humans. He intends to show what war does to not only the landscape, but to the people who inhabit that land. His works try to convey what it is like to be a person in an  economically deprived area. McCurry shows his viewers that there is a “human connection between all of us.” He believes there is always some common thing between all humans despite the differences in religion, language, ethnicity, etc.

Image Analysis


The Steve McCurry manipulation controversy began when Italian photographer, Paolo Viglione, noted a rather obvious digital manipulation in one of McCurry’s prints at a show in Italy.

The image, taken of a street in Cuba, shows a section of a sign was intentionally moved to avoid blocking the man seen next to it. Other issues include the bricks that make up the columns of the building not aligning properly, while the column on the right actually overlaps with the frame of the car in the foreground.

A wide angle lens appears to have been used in order to capture the entire of the busy street. This makes the viewer feel like they are actually there, becoming drawn to the building that McCurry has composed into the centre based from the viewpoint of his camera.

The change at first appears to not be noticeable as it is in the background surrounded by other busy features in the foreground like the two people walking and the two cars, both of which are saturated in colour to give the image a feeling of liveliness. The manipulation is an attempt to balance the composition.

The project based around Cuba is not one related to photojournalism as it is in his own personal interest. He is therefore not breaking the NPPA Code of Ethics however is still using manipulation in a way to enhance his visual storytelling.

Breaking the Rules

William Eugene Smith  broke nearly every rule in the book: posing his subjects, manipulating his prints, and often becoming dangerously over-involved in his stories.

When asked by one interviewer why he so persistently ignored many of the fundamental tenets of documentary photography, he tersely shot back: “I didn’t write the rules – why should I follow them?”

Abstract forces like corporate malfeasance, cyber-warfare and climate change make demands of visual storytelling – demands which can only be met if photographers refuse to play by the rules inherited from their forebears, rules which some of them did not deign to follow in any case.

The Rule of Manipulation

Almost every stage of the photographic process is a manipulation, and is open to no less egregious misrepresentations.

To paraphrase the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, you don’t need to manipulate an image to mislead an audience; you simply need to change the caption. And yet used openly, in the right context, manipulation can reveal truths that a single image alone never could.

Dutch photographer Alice Wieling “I felt that, with mere documenting, I wasn’t able to tell the story as I was experiencing it,” she says of the stage-managed excursions to which journalist-visitors are subjected. Her response was to digitally merge her photographs of official North Korea propaganda with her own images of workers and decaying factories.

https://www.stephengill.co.uk/portfolio/portfolio/nggallery/album-1-2/coexistence/thumbnails/page/1

Stephen Gill created a new body of work and a book responding to an industrial wasteland that is the remains of the steel-making industry in the city of Dudelange.

“For eight months leading up to my first visit to the territory, my mind increasingly started tuning into the microscopic worlds within worlds, and I became ever more aware of the many parallels between patterns and process in the pond and those in our own lives as individual humans within societies…Slowly I became committed to the idea of attempting to bring these two apparently disparate worlds — so physically close yet so different in scale – visually closer together.”

In order to draw these two worlds together Gill employed the use of a medical microscope from the University of Luxembourg and a pail of water scooped from the pond. With the microscope, he studied and photographed the miniscule creatures and plant life.

 

He could not bring the people to the pond, so he dipped his underwater camera into its water prior to making portraits of the Dudelange residents. Later on, he also dipped the prints into the pond itself, so microscopic life was also transferred onto the surface of the paper.

Using Stephen Gill’s work as inspiration can directly link to my concept of environment as he focused in this book on the affects of the industrial wasteland on a pond nearby looking parts of life that coexist but don’t belong together.

About Stephen Gill

Gill is a British photographer, who mainly draws inspiration from his immediate surroundings of inner city life in East London and more recently Sweden with an attempt to make work that reflects, responds and describes the times we live in. Stephen Gill was introduced to photography at an early age by his father, and his first photographs reflected his interests in birds, animals and music.

“Stephen Gill is emerging as a major force in British photography. His best work is a hybrid between documentary and conceptual work. It is the repeated exploration of one idea, executed with the precision that makes these series so fascinating and illuminating. Gill brings a very British, understated irony into portrait and landscape photography.”
Martin Parr

Outside In by Stephen Gill:

“I hoped through this approach to encourage the spirit of the place to clamber aboard the images and be encapsulated in the film emulsion, like objects embedded in amber. My aim was to evoke the feeling of the area at the same time as describing its appearance.”

“The results included some highly detailed macro recordings amongst and within the landscapes and portraits. I like to think of these photographs as in-camera photograms in which conflict or harmony has been randomly formed in the final image depending on where the objects landed.”

Other Stephen Gill Zines

https://www.stephengill.co.uk/portfolio/portfolio/nggallery/album-1-2/hackney-flowers/thumbnails

Photoshoot Plan

For my first photoshoot i wanted to incorporate Stephen Gills style of photography looking at smaller details around an area like he did  in the area containing a pond situated within an industrial wasteland. I want to manipulate the way the camera takes the photo and how it image appears. For example to create a blurred effect i will place something over the lens so I am physically manipulating the camera to produce something unique. I also want to manipulate the images by taking objects i find in an area and superimpose them onto the image of place them in front of the lens. I can relate this style of work to my concept of environment and pollution by making the subject of my images objects and rubbish I find surrounding the area I go and base my whole image around it. I like the way Stephen gill used a medical microscope to see what was in the pond water, the images making interesting patterns. To interpret this i can look for similar patterns and marks. I could also manipulate these photos after they have been taken by doing what Stephen Gill did and dipping his printed out images into the pond water (the environment) he was photographing. To experiment with the images further I take I will print out my photographs and physically add objects I find around the area I am exploring and retake the image.

http://www.gupmagazine.com/books/stephen-gill/coexistence