Paul Virilio was a French cultural theorist,urbanest, and aesthetic philosopher. As well as having all these roles he also produced some images of bunkers which highly suit the topic and scheme we are currently looking at. Virilio was born in 1932. Around this time in France is when the great depression hit however France was one of the countries to be lastly effected which later led to the high rise in unemployment

Analysis of his image:

Visually, we can clearly see the images are of old bunkers maybe used during the war. The image due to the some shading clearly presents the image as 3D, this adds reality into the images and leads us to not think he has photoshopped them. From some of his images due to the outgrowth of nature onto these bunkers we can kind off see that this was photographed at a later time which indicates that it could potentially be quite old however I think he has converted the image to black and white to hide the age and ruins of the bunkers so we don’t think so intensely when looking at it. I Like how the bunkers are still quite refined as there’s a repetition of lines and small patterns that must have been made in the creating of those bunkers.

Technical- Some of his images seemed to have been taken using natural lighting however, having looked quite closely at his images he seems to have upped the setting on his camera so some of his images seem to be quite over exposed I think he may have done this on purpose as it highlights the bunkers more and actually makes us only really focus on them. He’s experimented with different positioning of the camera which again gives a better stance of the bunker it also adds excitement as we’re not always looking at the same bunker. He also has actually selected different types of bunkers which vary in shape and size I think by him doing this its allowing a lot more variety. Not all of his images are completely black and white as there is some where the temperature of the image is more to the golden tonal range I think due to the context behind the photograph and the time that it has been photographed in fits well with the colour of the image being more to the old fashioned colourless almost images weather he did this intentionally or not its just another interpretation of why he might have done this.

Context – Photographing Bunkers which were built built by the Germans. Virilio – was actually French but was a child during the times of the war as he grew up with it but never had any understanding of it till later on in life when he realised that his country was effected by the wars and that actually there was a lot more to still be explored than to what had been posted on the news and in magazines. He grew up and saw all these remains