Edgar Martins is a Portuguese photographer.  The photograph below comes from a series of work he produced that was inspired by the writing and the sending of letters and the power and intimacy of letters.  For this mini series he photographed paper,  carefully lit and isolated from anything else.  There is a stillness to them that belies the fact they may have been written as suicide notes, contact between prison inmates and loved ones and more. Martins spent time working with court, prison and parole officials and indeed, prisoners in Portugal exploring this theme, that often ended in death for many of his subjects.

Above is one of my own photographs from a paper shoot beside one of Edgar Martins work.  They are both very different takes on photographing paper.  Edgar Martins photograph and way of working is a lot darker the photograph is very dim compared to my way of photographing paper which uses very harsh artificial light on the paper,  this may be due to the context that Martins work with, when he photographs the paper he is looking at the power of paper in some very dark areas such as suicide notes and prison letters, the photograph portrays this in a visual manner of the black dark space with the very slim paper which itself is dimly lit,  this would be done on purpose by Martins maybe for effect of portraying the subjects he is looking into in his own visual manner.  Both takes on the paper are focusing on isolating the paper so it’s on its’ own, Martins does this with the dark space and the thin isolated paper, the paper in my photograph is isolated on the white background and left to itself on the white blank paper which is a different take on the ideas of isolating the paper.

Above is one of my own photographs from the shoot of ‘Photographing paper’ alongside one of Francis Bruguière own work.  In comparison to each other they have two different takes however they have some similarities with each other and they way they were photographed.  Both my own and Bruguière photographs seem to be using artificial light in order to create effect of light, tone and shadows and this is a similarity they both have with each other.   Bruguière looks and the texture of the paper by cutting it and folding them into each other this creates smooth textures of the paper whereas with my own image I experimented with folding and creasing the paper to create texture and to explore this, both takes are exploring texture but in two different ways with the paper.  Bruguière’s work shows a toned down exposure to some of his other work and is a lot darker when compared to my own work which is a lot brighter due to the white artificial light used creating a brighter photograph.

Lewis K. Bush is a British photographer, writer, curator and educator.  He aims “to draw attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world”, believing that “power is always problematic” because it is inherently “arbitrary and untransparent”.  London was once known as the Metropole, the mother city at the heart of a vast empire stretching across a quarter of the planet.  Produced during numerous winter night walks through the city, Metropole records the effect of this capital influx on London by documenting these new corporate high rises and luxury residential blocks as they are constructed and occupied.  Using double exposures to layer building over building, these structures becomes increasingly disorientating and threatening as the series progresses, obliterating scale, perspective and orientation, and emulating the sense of loss that many Londoners now feel.

Above is a comparison of my own photograph taken and edited and Lewis Bush’s own from the series ‘Metropole’.  Both of the photographs include a double exposure creating a blurred and busy effect on the photograph, this may be done intentionally by Bush to emphasis the thoughts he is trying to put across of the city and the ‘Metropole’ being a busy place with this rushing past, by creating a double exposure, maybe using the same image to angle it Bush is creating the effect that the building itself is rushing and moving which is implied by the way he presents the photograph that sits with the context of the project and the photograph was taken in.  Bush’s work has a lot of contrast in it’s photograph using the black and white whereas I am trying to use the blue tones to work together as the lights and the dark’s to create a contrast.  Both the photographs have a strong sense of line throughput the image, Bush’s photograph has very geometric and symmetrical lines whereas mine tend to be a bit more abstract themselves due to the angles and directions they go in.