In my response to Lewis Bush I am going to be photographing the financial sector within St. Helier in both day and night and then creating a double exposure effect with these photographs in photoshop. The inspiration for photographing the financial sector comes from Bush’s ‘Trading Zones‘ and the use of double exposure comes from his project ‘Metropole‘ in which he used this technique throughout. I will be carrying out two photoshoots for this response – one in the daytime and one at nighttime. This will allow me to be able to work with a wide variety of photographs in order to create different effects and settings within the edits.

Contact Sheets

Editing Process

I carried out the double exposure editing on photoshop. I started by using the quick selection tool to separate the building from the rest of the photograph and clicked the ‘refine edge’ button to create a blank background. I then placed the second photograph over the base photograph and added a layer mask in order to shape the second photograph in line with the base photograph. After this I used command-L in order to edit the levels of the second photograph and so changing the black/white/grey properties. Next I selected the blending option as ‘lighten’ to allow the two photographs to merge. I repositioned the second photograph over the base photograph to create a double exposure effect then brought the background forward to reintroduce it to the composition. Finally I repeated this with multiple photographs to create a disorientating composition.

My Edits

Analysis

In this photograph I have used natural lighting in order to capture the natural shadows and contrast of the new finance centre in St. Helier.  This natural lighting allowed for reflections in all of the windows which creates a variety of tones throughout the composition. This variety of tones creates contrast between the dark black frames and the grey tones of the windows.  I used a deep depth of field to capture this photograph to ensure that every detail was in focus including the reflections in the windows.  By layering multiple photographs over the top of the original I have been able to create dark frames and dark shadows to contrast with the lighter tones – I think that this create a much more dramatic and slightly abstract photograph. I used a shutter speed of 1/60 to capture the original photograph along with a fairly low ISO of 200 in order to ensure that the photograph is exposed enough but is as high quality as possible. This high quality photograph allowed for the similar photographs overlayed on top to blend in well to provide more contrast and structure to the photograph.

There is no colour in this photograph as I thought that the black and white filter really allowed the black dark tones to come out to provide more contrast and shadows within the photograph. The lack of colour also allows the viewer to focus on the dark lines and paths running throughout the composition and so emphasising the disorientating intent of the photograph. The tones throughout this photograph are mostly gray with streaks of black running throughout it – there are not many bright tones in this photograph which I think works well as the grey and black tones allow the original photograph and the photographs on top to blend well together to create a photograph that is familiar to someone from Jersey but unfamiliar at the same time. From the way that I have cropped this photograph using perspective crop it is a very 2D and flat photograph except for the photograph overlayed in the bottom third of the photograph. This bottom third of the photograph appears to come towards the viewer which sends the rest of the photograph to the back, ultimately creating a sense of confusion within the viewer. The windows and lines throughout the photograph are very aesthetically pleasing as they create a pattern of squares and lines, making the photograph more intriguing. There is no immediate viewpoint that they eye is led to due to the abstractness and pattern throughout the photograph. The line straight down the middle of the photograph creates a sense of division within the composition as well as a sense of satisfaction due to the organisation of the placement.

I took inspiration for this photograph from Lewis Bush’s project ‘Metropole‘ in which he looked at the collapse of the British Empire and how in its place globalised capitalism grew as London has been rebranded as “a city of demolition, cranes, and glittering new high rises”.  ‘Metropole’ aims to record the effect of this on London through the form of documentary photography and I aim to show the effect of how Jersey has changed with the construction of the new financial centre and all the new flats and other offices within the area. St. Helier has changed drastically over the past couple decades and it may seem as if it is moving too fast for some of the residents that have lived through these stages. This photograph was taken as part of a shoot of the new financial centre, I took the original photograph and layered multiple photographs of the same centre over the top to create a disorientating effect.

I have attempted to recreate the double exposure that Bush used in his ‘Metropole‘ project in order to convey the idea that as the financial centre grows and as construction within the area goes on at the rate it is, the people of St. Helier are becoming more lost and disorientated as this is no longer the St. Helier that they’ve lived in for all of these years.  Bush used this effect in order to create the “sense of loss that many Londoners feel” in the big city. This theme of a feeling of loss within the city links to the genre of ‘political landscape’ as it looks at both the present and past in St. Helier showing how it has changed and how the residents of St. Helier are feeling about it all.  I think that the government of Jersey is focusing too much on construction and not what would really benefit and satisfy the people of Jersey.

Lewis Bush (born 1988 in London) is a British photographer, writer, curator and educator.  Bush studied history at the University of Warwick and gained a master’s degree in documentary photography from London College of Communication, where he lectures on photojournalism and documentary photography.  In his work bush seeks to draw attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world – such as finance.  Bush has the standpoint that ‘power is always problematic because it’s natural resting state is arbitrary and untransparent’.  Bush’s projects tend to incorporate writing and he has written about photography for a range of national and international print and web titles.

In Bush’s ‘The Memory of History‘ from 2012, he travelling through a range of European countries to document the way in which the past was being politically manipulated in the context of the economic crisis and recession.  This project links to the theme ‘political landscapes’ as it shows how the invisible power of politics is used and abused in different places over time.

Bush is a photographer in residence at the Societe Jersiaise in Jersey where he is working on his project ‘Trading Zones‘ in  which he looks at the international finance industry.  It looks at the global economic crisis that began ten years ago and the resulting financial sector. Finance has been very unrepresented in documentaries due to its complexity and stature meaning that there is plenty of potential for investigation for documentary photographers such as Bush.  The project ‘Trading Zones’ is a result of six months spent as the 2018 Archisle photographer in residence at the Societe Jersiaise in Jersey, which is currently undergoing huge renovations in the financial sector.  Bush says he has used this time to “establish the foundations of what I anticipate will be a long term photographic inquiry into the financial services industry” as the project comes under documentary photography so this project will be ongoing over a long period of time.  Bush says in an interview with ASX “Finance here is the accidental product of events going back almost a thousand years, but is it also the result of very intentional choices made over the last half century” which links back to political landscape in the sense that trends and features change over time but often loop back around.  There are multiple methods of approach taken to this project by Bush – ‘Trading zones’ has inspiration stemming from different areas such as:

• Portraits using a technique called ‘composite portraiture‘ developed by cousin of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, who was an anthropologist.
  • Bush merged hundreds of corporate portraits from a variety of countries specialising in different aspects of finance, resulting it what the average finance worker may look like.
• Cards asking what the public thought of finance which drew inspiration from a project by EJ Major, who sent out cards asking ‘what love is’, expecting people to respond in whichever way they felt appropriate.

Bush’s residency finishes with an exhibition of ‘Trading Zones’ in the St. Helier Old Police Station where financial investigations unit of Jersey Police was based. This project is currently a work in progress and is continuously looking for future financial collaborators in order to develop this project further.

Analysis

In this photograph it appears that lighting from within the inside of the building was used in what is possible night photograph. The use of this light is used to Bush’s advantage advantage as he uses double exposures to layer building over building creating a disorientating viewing along with contrast between the over-exposed lights and the dark shadows within the building. There is a wide tonal range within the photograph thanks to the range of shadows and lights within the photograph – this wide tonal range makes the photograph interesting in whichever segment the viewer looks as it creates intricate shapes and shadows throughout.  The lights and shapes are very intense as the viewer has to try piece the photograph together in order to understand it. It is unclear whether a short or deep depth of field will have been used in this photograph due to the disorientating nature of it – this adds to the mysterious elements of the photograph. A fairly slow shutter speed will have been used along with a low ISO in order for enough of the light to enter the lens from the dark environment whilst keeping the quality of the photograph as high as possible.

There is no colour in this photograph – only black and white along with the shades in between. This black and white approach to the photograph is very effective as it allows you to focus on the structure of the photograph and the buildings rather than being distracted by colours. The black and white effect also adds to the disorientating effect of the double exposure technique. Another addition that the black and white effect brings to the photograph is more contrast between the tones – especially between the bright white lights and the black shadows. The bright lights may be representative of a light at the end of the tunnel due to their glow in comparison to their environment. The photograph seems to have the texture of a graphite drawing which creates a really interesting viewing as what the viewer is seeing seems almost surreal. There is quite a 3D effect to the photograph due to the blending of photographs in order to create platforms coming out towards the viewer from the building. This 3D effect is complimented by the wide range of tones within the photograph. There are two points in the photograph to which the eye is initially drawn – these are the bright heaven-like lights and the platforms extending from the buildings – this is due to the lights contrasting in tone to the rest of the photograph and the platforms providing different shapes to the rest of the image. The platforms are also placed along the higher horizontal line of the rule of thirds meaning they add aesthetic to the photograph.

This photograph was taken from Bush’s project titled ‘Metropole‘.  This project looked at the collapse of the British Empire and how in its place globalised capitalism grew. London has been rebranded from “an investment opportunity” to “a city of demolition, cranes, and glittering new high rises”.  ‘Metropole’ aims to record the effect of this on London through the form of documentary photography. The project is titled ‘Metropole’ as London was once known as the Metropole meaning it was the mother city at the centre of a vast empire. These photographs were produced “during numerous winter night walks through the city”.

On Bush’s website he says that he used double exposure to create “increasingly disorientating and threatening as the series progresses” in order to create the “sense of loss that many Londoners feel” in the big city. This theme of a feeling of loss within the city links to the genre of ‘political landscape’ as it looks at the past of London and how it has changed – possibly for the worse. Bush continues this theme in his work on ‘Trading Zones’ in which he studies the Jersey financial sector. I think that through this exploration of disorientation and change Bush is trying to show that people often feel that the world is moving too fast for its own good as people get lost in temporary trends and patterns of life.