Henri Cartier-Bresson was a french photographer whom many have credited as being one of the founding fathers of street photography. Born on the 22nd February 1908, Bresson came from a wealthy family, with his father being a wealthy textile owner and his mother a landowner herself. This in turn allowed for his education and pursuit of photography to be entirely funded by his parents.
in 1929 after being placed under house arrest for hunting without a license, Bresson was introduced to an American Expatriate by the name of Harry Crosby. Crosby learned of Bressons interest and passion for photography, and therefore issued him with his first camera. Bresson had a long term affair with Crosby’s wife, which, upon ending in 1931 two years after Crosby committed suicide, made him move to Cote D’ivoire in West Africa where he lived for several years hunting and selling game to locals. Upon returning to france in late 1931, Bresson found insipration from the surrealist movement and this sparked his desire to take photography seriously and persue his career as a professional
Notable Works
Allee Du Prado, which simply translates to Prado alley is an image depicting a man in a long trench coat and bowler hat smoking a long cigarette. At the time, this person was seen to be someone of higher class and power and typically quite wealthy, so therefore the dead trees in the background provide a contrast between the clean cut image portrayed by the male in the foreground and the trees themselves.
Bressons most well known image, Rue Mouffetard, Depicts a man outside of a train station seemingly running to catch a train. However, Bresson captured the image at the exact moment both of the subjects feet had left the floor, giving the appearance that the subject is floating. This affect is amplified in terms of effectiveness by the reflection of the subject in the water on the ground. This image is a defining one in the surrealist genre as it finely depicts the crossover between real life and surreal ideas
In this image, Bresson has captured an avenue of trees leading down a path. The image features the first trees and then the avenue continues snaking around to the left of the image in the background. The completely white sky can help in providing a contrast within the image as the darker colours of the trees highlight the prominence of the feature within the image.
Rafal Milach was born in Gliwice, Poland in 1978. He is a photographer, visual artist, and author of multiple photo books.
His works have been exhibited in Poland and worldwide, and can be found in the collections of the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the ING Polish Art Foundation, Kiyasato, the Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan, and the Brandts in Odense in Denmark.
In his photo book, The First March Of Gentlemen, he focuses on using bright backgrounds with objects and cut outs of archive images. He takes two sheets of coloured paper, one for the floor and one for the wall, and places them on a table against a wall. He then chooses an object and places it on the coloured paper, and takes images of it. During editing, he chooses archive images which feature people in black and white, cuts them out, and chooses places to put them around the objects to make the people look like they’re interacting with the objects.
Visual :
In this image you are immediately drawn to the colours which have been chosen for this image. A dark green against a pinkish-purple with emerald green pyramids placed in the middle. There are cut-outs of people from images which seem to be from the archives, of two young boys and four soldiers. The boys seem to be possible hiding from the soliders from behind the pyramids.
Here is how I did my layout for my newspaper spread:
For my first page I wanted to use a picture I took in the war tunnels of a hallway as I want to show one aspect of occupation vs liberation.
For my second and third pages, I used pictures from two different photo shoots. I wanted to show how the German soldiers were working and fighting. I used photos of a WW2 helmet, a bunker and bunker stairs.
For my fourth page, I used an image from my bunker photo shoot to show again how German soldiers worked and fought, which portrays the occupation side.
For my fifth page, I used images from my bunker and WW2 photo shoots to show again how German soldiers worked and fought and what objects they used. This again portrays the occupation side.
As part of our photography course work we were asked to produce a Newspaper spread to go into the Jersey Evening Post to showcase the Year 13s Photography work at Hautlieu School. The images i can see been to use have been from previous photo shoots in the project which have been landscape, portrait and objects. I have tried to use as different images as possible in order to showcase all my photographic skills.
To make my Newspaper spread i used Adobe InDesign which allows me to make my spread digitally, I also used Adobe Photoshop to create further edits to my images. I used the dimensions 420mm(h) x 280.5mm(w) to create the overall layout of the book and then used Photoshop to save my images as high resolution ‘Tiff Files’ (4000 pixels) which allowed my images to print out as high quality as possible. There was a requirment to have one image a ‘ full bleed image’ which can be seen as included in the book and I also chose my own layout of the spread myself.
My Newspaper Spread
As seen below I have created my spread which includes a mixture of Landscape, Portrait and Object images which have all been taken with a Canon camera and edited on Photoshop. I enjoyed making this spread as there wern’t much instructions to making your piece which meant you were allowed to be as creative as wanted. I made my spread very simplistic and didn’t include any text or quotes as i didn’t want to distract from my pieces.
My personal Investigation based on Occupation vs Liberation, has allowed me to develop my photographic skills and has furthered my historical knowledge on the German Occupation of Jersey.
As an introduction into our project on the German Occupation of Jersey, we visited the Société Jersiaise. Looking through the photo archives in groups allowed me to gain insight into what World War 2 was like through imagery. I finally got a better understanding on the historical context of the Occupation in Jersey, whereas previously I didn’t appreciate the significance of this event.
I began the project by writing an essay with the title “Whose Archive is it anyways?”, which allowed me to explore the importance of archives, it’s purpose and why they are still relevant in the present day. I now know how new technology has changed the role of archives as well as what we think an archive is. My understanding of archival photographs is that they open a window into the past and give a glimpse of what people’s lives were like during the Occupation.
We then went on a photography trip to see the bunkers located at Battery Moltke. A CIOS member began the tour by giving us insight into what the German Occupation was like in Jersey. We explored and photographed the principle bunker which has been turned into a museum. I also visited Batterie Lothringen during my spare time which was a World War 2 coastal artillery battery. During this photo-shoot I learnt the importance of lighting. I captured landscape images during Golden hour where the warm colour of the low sun enhanced the colours of the scenes.
Our photography class also learnt how to use Lightroom, a photo management and editing software combined into a single tool. I now know that it helps to import, organise, manage and find your images. I first started experimenting with Lightroom when using my images from the Battery Moltke photo-shoot.
After learning about zines and how it’s a tool that photographers can use to tell a visual story, we were then expected to create one based on the Occupation vs Liberation theme. Before getting started, I analysed the zine “Concrete Jungle” which helped me to gain inspiration and made me realise the importance of narrative and sequencing within a zine. I created a zine called “Glimpse of the past” using InDesign. My first zine only includes imagery from the Battery Lothringen photo-shoot since these images where my strongest outcomes.
We then visited the Jersey Archive which contains archival material from public institutions as well as private businesses and individuals. I now know that their purpose is to preserve the written cultural heritage of the Island so that future generations can access the material in order to learn more about Jersey’s past.
Another site where we developed our landscape photography further was the Jersey War Tunnels. Visiting this location helped to improve our camera skills in dark lighting since we learnt about the IOS setting and what shutter speed to use in low lighting conditions. This ensured that the photographs wouldn’t be under or over exposed.
We then focused on portraiture. This is when I researched two portrait photographers: Martin Toft and Ernest Baudoux. I compared their photographic styles and incorporated both their techniques into my own portrait photography. This lead me into conducting my own photoshoot on Joan Tapley in the studio. Before we photographed Joan, we got to listen to her war stories which allowed our class to gain knowledge of what it must have been like to experience the war through childhood. This photo-shoot helped me learn the different types of lighting used when capturing portraits in the studio as well as how to interact with your subject to gain the best photographic outcomes
We began the next theme Still Life by researching the historical context and the symbolism presented through objects. We got to photograph Occupation Objects from the Jersey Archive in a creative way using the still life table. Our photography class learnt about the lighting used to photograph objects and the importance of using a tripod to capture a steady image. After doing two still life photoshoots, we moved onto photomontage. This is when I began creating edits in response to The First March Of Gentlemen by Rafal Milach. I was inspired by the collaged archive photographs as well as the geometric shapes which restrained the figures. This influenced my second zine where the bold, vivid colour scheme juxtaposes with the historical black and white images of soldiers. I like the idea that the colourful aspect of my zine camouflages the serious subject matter of World War 2.
The occupation VS liberation project was beneficial to me as before starting it I was questioning how I could connect with it as I only had one member of my family still alive today who had experienced war and she was only a newborn. The project made me realize I font have to have family connections to war, when Bob came in although I didn’t know him his stories still fascinated me. It has definitely given me more of an appreciation towards the Islands history before I didn’t think much of it. I want my personal study to be a development of the occupation and how many people felt helpless, they have no role whilst others were out fighting they were just trapped on the island no way of contributing. Many people were jobless, many from Jersey before would go to the mainland to discover themselves and find a job they have passion for because the tiny island lacked that and personally it still does today. I enjoyed taking landscapes as there are so many bunkers on the island which are easily accessible to me and the scenery around them is stunning because they were built to defend the island on its coastline. As well as that I enjoyed the shoot with my gran as I have always wanted to take pictures of her house as it has such character and it has an old interior which is outdated but it feels homely. This photo shoot was for the home sweet home task so it wasn’t a direct link to the occupation but to me it was a metaphor for how important people homes were to them because many had curfews or were under house arrest so their homes were a reflection of their interests and personalities. Homes during the occupation were places of security and privacy, away from the enemy, away from harm possessively. Mat Collishaw took my interest as he was a contemporary, modern artist but used old techniques and concepts, its that contrast between old and new that I like.
From the project Occupation vs Liberation I have learned a lot of new skills to help me with my future work and personal study. During the project, I have learnt how to photography in low light, which was when I was doing my object photo shoot. I also learned how to use different types of lighting to light an object including back light and how to experiment with background types. I have also learnt how to use a tripod effectively and how to use this to take images from above. I also really enjoyed making my own zines for the first time, I think a zine is a really effective way of displaying and presenting photography. In my personal study I hope to continue experimenting with background and lighting in order to create interesting photographs.
What has inspired me in this project?
This really depends one what part of the project. During the Landscape portion, the artist that mostly inspired my work was Paul Virilio, who took images of war structures, that is why I edited most of my outcomes into black and white. I also was inspired by the montage technique of combing images in an interesting way. I was also inspired by the stories and people behind the places I took images of and showed this in my montages. I enjoyed people and object more. I thought it was brilliant to take images of an actual occupation survivor and the outcomes were really good. The idea of looking at their stories and creating a narrative within a zine has sparked quite a few ideas for me. When looking at people I was inspired by Martin Parr’s saturated images commenting on the silliness of British culture. I found that really interesting and might do something similar in relation to Occupation vs Liberation. I also enjoyed objects and working with the lighting in the studio. I liked using a reflective service to create soft and sentimental appearance to the image. with the occupation objects.
I have documented the process of editing one of the photos I have taken on the trip to Paris. The goal was to achieve a lightly faded retro style.
This is the original image, before editing.First I applied vibrance and exposure adjustments to the image. The vibrance adjustments help bring out the colours in the image and make it ‘pop’ more, whilst the exposure adjustments I have applied help make the image look faded as it softens all of the dark tones in the image.Next I created a new layer. I used this layer to add noise later on so I set the blend mode for this layer to ‘Overlay’ and applied a neutral 50% gray layer mask.Then I added noise to the new layer.I set the density to 10% as I didn’t want the noise to be overwhelming. I also selected Gaussian noise over Uniform as it helps make it look more natural, I made the noise monochromatic as well.As I didn’t want the noise to be too overwhelming I then added Gaussian blur on top of the layer; this helps blend the noise in a small bit.I set the radius to 1 pixel as I wanted the blur to be very subtle.I then went back and added an extra layer of noise as the previous layer was barely visible. This time i set the density to 20% as I wanted this layer to be more visible.This is the final result.
Straight photography emphasizes and engages with the camera’s own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail. The term generally refers to photographs that are not manipulated, either in the taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes, but sharply depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it. Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz pioneered Straight photography in New York while the Hungarian-born László Moholy Nagy exploited pure photography to maximize the graphic structure of the camera-image. These straight or pure approaches to photography continue to define contemporary photographs, while being the foundation for many related movements, such as Documentary, Street photography, Photojournalism, and even later Abstract photography.
