When it comes to editing, I wanted to try a few things. My raw images are quite bland, and I wanted to make my images pop a little more.
I chose on of my favourite ‘Bed’ images to experiment on first.
I started by turning the image fully black and white- this was to make the background monotone for the waste to stick out. Then, using a history brush tool, (brings back the original state which would be colour) I recoloured the waste.
This was the outcome. I think it looked quite cool and at the same time looked normal. The background was already quite monotone but making it fully black and white made it stand out that little more. I liked it alot but i wanted to experiment some more.
To do so, I decided to completely change the colour hue. I eventually chose the hue that resulted in turquoise and purple- it made the setup look more unnatural. I like this because the way we are polluting the ocean is unnatural in itself.
I continued and did this to a few other images that I liked and this was the oucome.
Looking at them altogether made me realise that the colours look a little too similar- I like it a lot but I just wanted to try different hues in the different photographs.
I also like this outcome but it just comes to putting these images together and finding out which sequence and colours look best when presented.
To begin, I chose 3 images from each shoot- the ones I believe were the most successful and the ones I would like to work with.
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I chose these 3 from my bathtub shoot. Image 1 was originally larger but I chose to crop it down as there was too much unnecessary space, therefore taking the focus away from the message. Image 2 is more of a low view in the tub- the taps aren’t on show and all you can see is the drain. I liked this image due to the simplicity and it may make viewers look and think about what it is- however I did use flash, creating this lit texture in the tub which I personally dont think looks good. Image 3 is my favourite out of the three images. The taps create good contrast and I like the diagonal angle as well as the curve in the tub, creating a modern style and interesting composition.
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These 3 photographs are all quite similar however I like the angle of image 1 and 3. Like in my bathtub photos, I like how they are taken at an angle. In image 2, the angle is straightforward, there are a few things that look ‘in the way’ such as the plant and wardrobe and it looks uneven. When taken at an angle, you cant tell.
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My plate images are my favorite ones, I love the lighting and how the plastic reflects it. Image 1 was taken before I added cutlery. I have a glass dining table so when I tried to take images of the plate on the table it looked tacky, so I used my floor- although image one visually meets the aesthetic, viewers may not be able to know what they are looking at- so out of these images I like 3 the most. The cutlery is clear and on the plate as well as the waste. In image 2 the light is a tab bright and the fork is not fully in view.
For the photographs above, I filled my bathtub with a few inches of cold water and dumped some trash that I had collected onto it. This included Plastic bags, wrappers, cans and bottles. I realised that there wasn’t a load and taking pictures of the whole tub didn’t quite reach the ‘exaggeration’ I was hoping for so I bunched it all together and took close-up photographs to make it look fuller. These contact sheets are to show my most relevant photographs.
For my bed photoshoot, I kept the trash mostly in the same place, only testing different angles and viewpoints so that i would have a variety to choose from. My main idea was to keep these images quite simple, this is because further on I would like to edit them using photoshop and eventually put them together as a final result and I don’t want it to be too crowded.
Using just plastic bottles and cans on my plate, I thought this would be a great addition to my ‘what if it was me?’ idea. Not only are we polluting the ocean, this affects many food chains within it.
For the theme of Anthropocene, the era of which humans have made significant impact on earth, I have chosen to work with the idea of pollution in the ocean. Instead of taking a straightforward response such as photographing waste on beaches, my idea is to put humans in a sea creatures point of view and ask the question: what if it was me? Although Jeremy Carroll portrayed the struggle of a sea creature through portraiture, where she tied up and restricted people in her photographs, I would like to take a more object based/ maybe abstract approach. My main idea is to collect trash for a short while and place it around my home in places where I personally feel most comfortable. I take pride in keeping my home clean and tidy so this will specifically apply to me and others like me. My places of comfort will be representing the ocean- home to all the sea creatures. The plastic waste that I place around will represent the invasion and discomfort we place upon those creatures. When it come to how these photographs will turn out, I would like to use photoshop to edit them in interesting ways, perhaps changing the hue for a ‘cool’ result- but not too much to distract the viewer from my message.
“What would you do if you found yourself trapped in a dangerous material that you just couldn’t wriggle out of? It’d be a pretty desperate situation, but it’s one faced by our marine cousins on a daily basis: entanglement in plastic – millions of tonnes of which end up in the ocean each year – affects hundreds of species. To try and make this tragic result of our litter more relatable, an artist has come up with a new exhibit that brings the situation a bit closer to home.” Jeremy Carroll’s exhibit, appropriately entitled ‘Entanglement’, depicts humans caught up in waste typically found in seas and along beaches. Photos include a person with fishing nets around his neck and shoulders, and another with their head and arm caught in a plastic basket. The striking photos act as a stark reminder of the issues sea life faces as a result of our inadequate approach to marine plastic prevention.’ While many of us feel saddened by the harm inflicted on marine wildlife, many people still take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to justifying the use of disposable, single-use plastic products.
These photographs were taken in a studio using studio lighting, you can tell due to the bright white background. Photograph 1 is of a male wearing a snorkelling kit tangled in what looks to be the type of rope found on beaches which were previously used to hold buoys down as well as small boats. The bright green rope is tied tightly around his neck and his head is tilted up, as if gasping for air. There is also some form of red and yellow plastic that is tied around his breathing tube which could also be a reason of why it seems that he cannot breath and here is a longer rope tied around his upper body, which is visibly tight due to his skin and fat puffing out. In the photograph his skin looks like its glowing and smooth although he is a male (males stereotypically are portrayed as tough)- this could be to show the delicacy of a fish for example as well as that stereotype not applying to sea creatures. If it were tied around a fish they would most likely be in excruciating pain due to their fins and gills.
Brett Stanley
‘Brett is an underwater portrait photographer who has been doing this for over ten years. He loves being under the water and adding photography to that is just a bonus. His natural calm nature in the water really shows through and helps his clients to feel comfortable, which is the first aim of any underwater shoot. Whilst based in Los Angeles, USA, the Australian born photographer travels frequently and relishes the chance to work with new people and new locations all over the world. Always looking to innovate, Brett has built custom equipment and perfected his techniques to make every photoshoot the best it can be.’
I will be focusing on one specific shoot with documentary filmmaker Christine Ren who has a unique set of experiences and skills: she has degrees in marine affairs/policy and biology, worked as a ballet dancer and is an experienced diver. When she decided to combine these personal attributes to make art advancing ocean conservation efforts, she ended up with some intriguing results.
Jellyfish Soup
Blind Spots
Jellyfish Soup
‘Blind Spots’
This particular photograph by Brett Stanley is of a woman underwater, blindfolded in a ballerina costume. She is holding a red shopping cart full of plastics of which are floating out of the cart and all around her. This represents how even when we as human beings do a normal daily/weekly function such as shopping, the plastics in our cart slowly make their way into the ocean. Another point I thought about as to why the woman is wearing a ballerina costume could only be because she is a ballerina in real life, however, in my mind ballet is a very delicate and beautiful sport, showing that even the finest people in the world are causing destruction to the ocean blindly. The background is a dark sea-blue representing deep ocean and in the background you can faintly see plastic bags, as well as the midground, where the woman is, with a mixture of different plastic items such as bottles, containers and wrappers. It looks as if the woman is leaving this trail of plastic behind her. In the foreground there is one particular thing that stands out which is the white plastic bag with a yellow smiley face that reads ‘Thank you Have a nice day!’. I believe that this was placed there on purpose to be ironic and slightly humorous. The bag originally says that as a thank you note to the person that attended the store, but now was staged to make is seem as the ocean has pushed this bag into place, ironically thanking the human race for polluting it with their trash. The photograph was actually taken in a pool by ocean lover and photographer Brett Stanly, and the woman in this photo is Christine Ren who has degrees in marine affairs/policy and biology, worked as a ballet dancer and is an experienced diver. She contacted Brett in the hopes of making art advancing ocean conservation efforts and together they made this photograph. The one I am writing about now is called ‘Blind Spots’ and the reasoning is to show the majority of the populations apathy towards plastic, and how we are blindly polluting the ocean. As mentioned, the photograph was taken in a pool and therefore was staged- as you can see there was a lot of work put into this image which shows just how much they wanted to get this message out perfectly.
The photographer stated that he used Aquatica Housing and Sea & Sea lights, so he used proper underwater lights designed for this purpose, In the photo, the lighting that stands out is shining down onto the woman in a streaky form, as if the sun was putting her in the spotlight. It is quite delicate lighting, representing the delicacy of nature.
Comparison
Jeremy’s work is all about ‘what if it was you being strangled by plastic waste?’. He is putting humans in the position of the oceans population- graphically showing us what we are doing to the ocean in a way that people could understand. On the other hand, Brett is showing us what we are doing in a passive-aggressive viewpoint- instead of being graphic, he is saying ‘this is what you are doing anytime you go shopping’. However both of these photographs are clearly about ocean pollution- in Jeremy’s photograph the man is wrapped in rope that we probable have all seen laying around on a beach as well as wearing a snorkelling mask, and Brett’s photograph is a woman blindly polluting the ocean with a shopping cart full of plastic waste UNDERWATER.
Jeremy focuses more on the creatures of the ocean whereas Brett focuses on the ocean as a whole- nevertheless they are both about ocean pollution.
What is Anthropocene? The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined and made popular by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. The formal definition to this word is ‘an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.’ so, it is the era of which humanity impacts the earth substantially – an era we are in now. Many say that this began during the industrial revolution, the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840 when human activity had a great impact on carbon and methane in Earth’s atmosphere. Others think that the beginning of the Anthropocene should be 1945. This is when humans tested the first atomic bomb, and then dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil samples globally.
Anthropocene sits on top of Holocene, but is not an official unit of geologic time.
PHOTOGRAPHY CONTROLLED CONDITIONS MON 24TH – THURS 27TH MAY 2021
Groups 12B + 12E Periods 1-5 Mon 24th May and Tues 25th May
Groups 12C + 12D Periods 1-5 Wed 26th and Thurs 27th May
Select, edit and arrange final images
Complete all relevant and supporting blog posts
Add final images to print folder
Frame up / mount all available prints
Review blog and make improvements
“ANTHROPOCENE”
We have included a mini-unit to help you explore further opportunities within photography. We will spend time looking closely at this and discussing ideas with you…
Remember…your stimulus for the Controlled Conditions is…
ANTHROPOCENE
What is Anthropocene?
How and why should we tackle this topic through photography?
Use your skills and knowledge to date to tackle and approach this theme. ie: abstract, portraiture, identity, landscape, studio based photography etc. – YOU DECIDE!
DISCUSS
Now watch this and discuss the way in which photographers have responded to this theme…
Blog Posts to make :
Define “Anthropocene” and explain what it is.
2. Add a mindmap and moodboard of images, ideas and trigger points on your chosen genre ie: portraiture, studio (object or portraiture), abstract, landscape etc.
(These photographers will directly influence your final outcomes re : MOCK EXAM)
4. Organise and carry out your photo-shoots !!! You MUST complete a minimum of 2 PHOTO-SHOOTS (100-200 photos) in readiness for the mock exam itself. Responding to the theme of Anthropocene in your chosen genre.
5. Edit, select and develop your photographs and post contact sheets.
6. Produce a comparative analysis between one of your photographs and an image of one of your chosen photographers – discuss similarities and differences.
7. Develop your ideas through your images by editing, making decisions, reviewing and refining – selecting your collection of images or image as your final response to Anthropocene.
8. Ensure your write an evaluation that comments on your original intentions (what you set out to do) and how your realised those intentions. Is your outcome successful? Comment on strengths and successes.
LANDSCAPE – urban / industrial
You could be clever and think about creating landscapes that relates to your commentary, see Vilde Rolfsen’s work on Plastic Bag Landscapes.
And Yao Lau, who creates contaminated landscapes using landfill sites and mounds of derelict rubble.
Some suggestions for you to look at…
Edward Burtynsky…nature transformed through industry
George Marazakis…humanity’s effect on Earth
Sebastiao Salgado…documentary photographer and photojournalist, respect for nature while also sensitive to the socio-economic conditions that impact human being
J. Henry Fair…uses pictures to tell stories about people and things that affect people.
David Maisel…radically human-altered environments.
Camilo Jose Vergara…documentation of American slums and decaying urban environments.
Andrew Moore…the effect of time on the natural and built landscapes.
Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre….modern ruins.
Yao Lu… contaminated landscapes – created from landfills and mounds of derelict rubble.
David T. Hanson… waste land.
Troy Paiva…”Urban Explorer” investigating the ruins of “Lost America”.
Obviously, you can also use past photographers we have looked at throughout the landscape unit, especially industrial and urban landscape photographers. (see below)
Alexander Apostol
Bernd & Hilla Becher
Donovan Wylie
Edward Burntsky
Frank Breuer
Gerry Johansson
Joel Sternfeld
Josef Schultz
Lewis Baltz
Charles Sheeler
OBJECT – studio lighting
You can also use your skills to produce an object based project. Looking at how objects might reflect the theme of Anthropocene. ie: single use plastics, disposable objects, waste, rubbish etc.
Mandy Barker
Barry Rosenthal – collection of discarded plastic objects.
Jerremy Carroll – choked by plastics in the ocean.
Naomi White – beauty in plastic bags.
Sophie Thomas – found, discarded plastics/rubbish.
Steven Gallagher – plastic bag topology photography
Mandy Baker – marine plastic debris
PORTRAITURE
You might decide to explore Anthropocene through the genre of portraiture photography. How you do this is up to you? Below are some images that may challenge the viewer! Draw them into thinking about Anthropocene and how or what has been altered by human impact on Earth.
Alexandra Bellissamo – relationship between nature and mankind.
Vika Pobeda – fashion photographer using plastics as props
Darian Mederos – distorted view
ABSTRACT
You may focus on and wish to respond through the genre of abstract photography. Look back to the photographers from your first unit or discover new ones. Below are just some images to help you to engage in the topic.
The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.
The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.
THINK
What and where are you going to photograph and how you are going to take your images!!
Is it out and about, indoors, setting up your own lighting, collecting objects, photographing people, looking for abstract imagery etc.
Contacting Ronez quarry and gaining access to take photographs? Explore the industrial areas around La Collette – power station, recycling centre? The impact of farming on the land – plastic sheeting, poly tunnels etc, etc. Collecting washed up plastics from the beach. Asking family and friends to photograph them etc.
You may wish to intergrate the concept of altered landscapes into your project based on Anthropocene.
You could develop a set, sequence or group of final images.
You may choose to employ a range of creative and experimental techniques (digital and traditional) to create your new environments…
Creating changed, changing or altered landscapes
Creating altered landscapes by combining a range of images in Adobe Photoshop
Explore panoramic landscapes
Using photo montage/cut-n-paste techniques and printed matter (combine your own images with images from the internet, magazines, print-outs, newspapers etc)
You may already have a range of suitable images to start your designs…but may need to find additional images to work from:
Here are some examples to help inspire your ideas…
Tanja Deman
David Hockney inspired “joiner” photographs
3-d / dioramas
Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscapes
Felicity Hammond
Beomsik Won
Surrealist approaches
Jesse Treece
Krista Svalbonas
Paint directly onto photographs, as in these works by Gerhard Richter:
Gerhard Richter has painted over 500 of his own photographs (with many more works discarded): commercially printed images that are overpainted with spontaneous gestural smears, using leftover oil paint applied with palette knives, squeegees or doctors’ blades. In the examples above, the thick painted lines divide the composition and inject colour into what is otherwise a rather drab interior scene. The paint disturbs the viewer – shatters the illusion that we are quietly observing a scene – pulling our attention to the tactile surface and smear of texture in front of our eyes.
Combine paint and photographs digitally, like Fabienne Rivory‘s LaBokoff project:
This project by Fabienne Rivory explores interactions between imagination and reality. Selecting photographs that represent a memory, Fabienne digitally overlays a gouache or ink painting, introducing an intense vibrant colour to the work. Students might like to experiment with this idea by creating a photocopy of a work and applying ink or watercolours directly (watery mediums will not ‘adhere’ to an ordinary photography surface).
Overlay multiple photos from slightly different angles, like these experimental photographs by Stephanie Jung:
Stephanie Jung creates stunning urban landscapes, overlaying near-identical city scenes that have been taken from slightly different angles, at different transparencies and colour intensities. The repeated forms (buildings / vehicles / street signs) suggest echoed memories, vibrations of life; the ebb and flow of time.
Cut out shapes and insert coloured paper, as in these photographs by Micah Danges:
These landscape photographs by contemporary photographer Micah Danges have separate photographic layers and incorporate stylised abstract elements. The simple strategy of cutting pieces out of a photograph and adding layers of different paper can be a great technique for high school photography students.
Make an photography collage using masking tape, like Iosif Kiraly:
Whereas the previous photomontage montages involve precise trimming and arrangement of forms, this collage has an informal aesthetic, with visible pieces of masking tape holding it together. This can be a great method for shifting and moving pieces until the work is well balanced and cohesive. Iosif Kiraly’s work explores the relationship between perception, time and memory.
Photograph a single scene over time and join the pieces in sequence, like these composite photographs by Fong Qi Wei:
These photographs are from Fong Qi Wei’s ‘Time is a Dimension’ series, and show digital slices of photographs taken over several hours at one location. The shots above show a seaside in sunrise, with the images organised together in a way that shows the changing light conditions.
Inset scenes within other scenes, as in these photographs by Richard Koenig:
Richard Koenig hangs a print and rephotographs this in its new location, creating intriguing illusions of space within space. Perspective lines within the two images are aligned to create optical confusion, so the viewer is disconcerted and unsure about the separation of the two spaces. His work often features intimate, private moments inset within generic, impersonal, public environment.
‘The Great Wave’, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur […] At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives […]Most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure for both landscape and sky in a single picture. This usually meant sacrificing the sky, which was then over-exposed. Le Gray’s innovation was to print some of the seascapes from two separate negatives – one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky – on a single sheet of paper.
This ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations, merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing […] ‘Constructed Landscapes’ references early Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with film […] the work also engages with contemporary discourses on manipulation, the analogue/digital divide and the effects these have on photography’s status.
Blog Posts This Week…
Research Altered Landscapes and produce a definition/explain what they are.
Produce a Case Study about your chosen altered landscape photographer, include an analysis of one key image. Explain/show how this has inspired your ideas and process.
Show your images, process, editing, selection, final outcomes and evaluation.
Possible aspects of the anthropocene you could look at and explore include…
Clothing / fast fashion – cheap and disposable, synthetic fabrics
Industrial Farming – over production that is harmful to the land and animals
Commercial Fishing – by-catch issues, disturbance of sea bed
Single use plastics – unnecessary (?) and difficult to dispose of
Fossil fuels – heating, transport etc – harmful carbon emissions
De-forestation – usually to create farming areas but leads to land instability and global warming
Fly-tipping – often bulky / harmful products
Chemical waste / pollution – rivers and oceans become tainted and polluted
Cement production – massive energy consumption and release of harmful gases
Over-development – cluttered infra-structures
Generating ideas using binary opposites…
Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics (scientific study of language) According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within. You could make work about ANTHROPOCENE by exploring a problem versus a solution and vice versa…
Look carefully at these examples and think carefully about how they could be responses to your theme…
An “erratic” is a rock that has been transported by a glacier to somewhere far from its native environment. When the ice melts, it is left there, out of place. In this series of photos and sculptures, Darren Harvey-Regan went from the White Cliffs of Dover to Egypt’s Western Desert. In the desert he photographed natural chalk formations that had been scratched and shaped by wind and sand over centuries. In England he collected coarse lumps of chalk that had crumbled off the cliff face. He made them into sculptures by carving them with a razor blade and shaping them with sandpaper before placing them on plinths.
ALICE WIELINGA NORTH KOREA, A LIFE BETWEEN PROPAGANDA AND REALITY
April 2013. While the Western media dogs Kim Jong-Un’s steps during his missile test launches, I travel 2,500 kilometres through the North Korean interior. Once arrived, the images I know from my advance research correspond with the scenes my guides proudly show me during their propaganda tour. But seeing these scenes with my own eyes, I gradually discover that behind everything they present to me, a different reality is hidden. While I listen to my guides talking about what invaluable contributions the greatly admired leaders made to their country, I drive through a landscape that looks haggard and desolate. During my journey I collect propaganda material and take photographs of the reality I encounter. This material is the basis for my multimedia project North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality. With the found propaganda images and my own photographs I compose a story that deconstructs the North Korean propaganda. Alice Wielinga www.alicewielinga.nl
Coronado Feeders, Dalhart, Texas, 2012 18.9×16 inches. Archival pigment print on Baryta. Unframed. Edition of 250. Signed and numbered on reverse. Click here for more info on the Feedlots series.
Mishka Henner says : Coronado Feeders was the final feedlot I found after researching them for over a year. Vice magazine were featuring my work on oil fields and feedlots and the US picture editor, Christian Storm, encouraged me to keep searching right up to deadline.
It struck me as soon as I saw it. Coronado isn’t the largest feedlot in America. With a capacity of 60,000 cattle, it’s less than half the size of some of the biggest.
The configuration of pens, run-off channels, and its lagoon of cattle bodily waste is much the same as any other feedlot. What these elements represent is an efficient method for maximizing the meat yield of a living animal in the minimum amount of time for the highest profit…
Sea Change explores tidal changes around coastal Britain. These transitions provide an ever changing environment that is integral to Island Britain’s history and sea-going way of life.
Peter Mitchell got to know Leeds as a struggling artist, working as truck driver at times…and constantly re-visiting places that he saw were changing over time. Whole communities gave way to development, new industry and transport networks. “A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission” was published 40 years after conception…and now Leeds has changed beyond recognition. Mitchell’s photography have a painterly quality to them ; a sombre palette and considered compositions, but juxtapose the old and the new as well as the empty spaces created by change.
Robin Friend
In The Bastard Countryside Robin Friend presents evidence of a broken planet, over-consumption, waste and a lack of love and respect for the environment on our doorstep…
Thom and Beth Atkinson
Marking 75 years since the outbreak of the Blitz, Thom and Beth Atkinson’s first photobook, Missing Buildings, seeks to preserve the physical and psychological landscapes of the Second World War in London.
Over a million of London’s buildings were destroyed or damaged by bombing between 1940 and 1945. From the mysterious gap in a suburban terrace, to the incongruous post-war inner city estate, Missing Buildings reveals London as a vast archeological site, bearing the visible scars of its violent wartime past. But this book is more than a simple record of bombsites; to the artists’ generation, the war is the distant story of an epic battle, passed down to them through books, images and grandparents’ memories.
Blurring fact and fiction, Missing Buildings searches for this mythology, revealing strange apparitions of the past as they resurface in the architecture of the modern-day city. Missing Buildings asks us to contemplate the effects of war upon the British psyche and suggests that the power wrought on our imaginations by the Blitz is a legacy as profound as the physical damage it caused.
Eugene Atget and Gentrification
Working in and around Paris for some 35 years, in a career that bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, Eugène Atget created an encyclopedic, idiosyncratic lived portrait of that city on the cusp of the modern era. Around 1900, Atget’s focus shifted. The city’s urban landscape had been recently reshaped by the modernization campaign known as Haussmannization—a necessarily destructive process led by (and named after) Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann that saw Paris’s medieval neighborhoods razed and transformed into wide avenues and public parks. Those changes, in turn, kindled a broad interest in vieux Paris (“old Paris”), the capital in its pre-Revolutionary, 18th-century form. Atget’s documentary vision proved highly influential, first on the Surrealists, in the 1920s, who found his pictures of deserted streets and stairways, street life, and shop windows beguiling and richly suggestive
Joel Meyerowitz and New York 9/11: Aftermath
Comparison of images in New York; Joel Meyerowitz
Immediately after the harrowing events of September 11, 2001, the Ground Zero site in New York City was designated an active crime scene and closed off to reporters and photojournalists. Sensing the magnitude of the historical record about to be lost, internationally-acclaimed landscape photographer Joel Meyerowitz fought for access to the site.
Meyerowitz became the only photographer allowed to document the painful transformation of the World Trade Center site over time. For nine months he photographed “the Pile,” as the World Trade Center came to be known, and the courageous rescue personnel, police officers, firefighters, and construction workers leading the recovery efforts inside it.
Using both a large-format view camera and a 35-milimeter Leica, Meyerowitz made over 8,000 images around the sixteen-acre site where the Twin Towers once stood. His images show the mangled metal, shards of broken glass, and cascades of files and papers in the still-smoldering piles of debris; the riot of patriotic color seen in spontaneous memorials; and the elegiac silence of the dust that seemed to cover every surface in Lower Manhattan. Eventually, as his weeks in “the Pile” wore on, his subject shifted from the panoramic sweep of complete devastation to the intimate moments of mourning, strength, determination, and resilience in the faces and figures of the people on hand.
VanitasArt and Photography
Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, 1628. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.
The term originally comes from the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’
Vanitas are closely related to memento mori still lifes which are artworks that remind the viewer of the shortness and fragility of life (memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’) and include symbols such as skulls and extinguished candles. However vanitas still-lifes also include other symbols such as musical instruments, wine and books to remind us explicitly of the vanity (in the sense of worthlessness) of worldly pleasures and goods.
Paulette Tavormina
Inspired by the works of 17th century Old Master still life painters such as Giovanna Garzoni and Maria Sibylla Merian, American photographer Paulette Tavormina creates stunningly lit imagery of fruits and vegetables immersed in dark atmosphere
Mat Collishaw
A perfect example of the old technique getting combined with modern-age ideas is Mat Collishaw’s Last Meal on Death Row series of works. Although they appear as meticulously arranged staged photography still lifes of food, each image is actually based on death row inmates’ last meals before they are executed. Apart from the eerie subject, the pictures deliver a strong drammatic effect through an excellent use of chiaroscuro.
Krista van der Niet
On a much more lighter, even pastel note, we have Dutch photographer Krista van der Niet, whose compositions often include fruits and vegetables mixed with mundane objects such as socks, cloths and aluminum foil, giving it all a contemporary feel. Her photos often carry a dose of satire as well, which references consumerism and popular culture through a clever employment of objects within a carefully composed scenery.
Laura LetinskyOlivia Parker
Experimenting with the endless possibilities of light, self taught photographer Olivia Parker makes ephemeral constructions. She started off as a painter, but soon turned to photography and quickly mastered the way to incorporate an extensive knowledge of art history and literature and reference the conflicts and celebrations of contemporary life in her work. Over the many years of her artistic career, her style remained fluid, yet consistent
Richard Kuiper
Think paintings by Pieter Claesz or Adriaen Coorte, only in plastic. That’s how one could describe the photographs of Richard Kuiper, whose objects are all made of this everlasting, widely used material, including water bottles, floral arrangements, even the feathers. The artist tries to draw our attention towards the excessive use of plastic in our everyday lives, with the hope we will be able to decrease it before it takes over completely.
More Landscape
Light is the key element of photography. Photographers and filmmakers often capture both gradual and sudden transitions of light. Shadows from clouds pass across the landscape in pictures such as No Man’s Land by Fay Godwin. Other photographers show transitions of light over longer periods, such as Fong Qi Wei and Dan Marker-Moore, who record the change from day to night in film and photographs. Stephen Wilkes’ large scale night and day panoramas of urban vistas have the epic quality of paintings by the 16th century artist Brueghel.
FAY GODWIN, MARKERSTONE ON THE OLD ROAD FROM LONDON TO HARLECH, 1976
Fong Qi WeiDan Marker-MooreStephen Wilkes
Robert Rauschenberg
During times of stress and economic upheaval, the language of art can change reflecting a transition in the way individuals see themselves. This shift in perspective can even apply to a whole country. Robert Rauschenberg made politically charged collages in the 1960s that at first sight seemed to be chaotic assemblages of images and marks. However, these collages showed great compositional skill in directing the viewer’s attention and created memorable images that reflected the upheavals of the era. Rauschenberg had been influenced by the earlier collagist Kurt Schwitters and he, in turn, influenced other artists such as Sigmar Polke, David Salle and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Robert Rauschenberg Buffalo II (1964) screenprint
Examples of Political Transition to look at – communism – capitalism – consumerism – individualism
USSR – Russia
West Germany v East Germany
China
North Korea
Alice Weilinga
North Korea, a Life between Propaganda and Reality (2013 – 2015)
Alice Weilinga works in places like Pakistan and North Korea ; countries that have experienced radical changes in their traditional way of life but still cling to the dreams of their ancestors. Political decisions have shaped the communities and their struggles, whilst the propaganda machines depict a progressive future. Weilinga explores this tension and questions it’s validity by way of intricate composite imagery that draws on often-romanticised imagery that belies forced and slave labour, amongst other issues.
Koyaniqaatsi
Drawing its title from the Hopi word meaning “life out of balance,” this renowned documentary reveals how humanity has grown apart from nature. Featuring extensive footage of natural landscapes and elemental forces, the film gives way to many scenes of modern civilization and technology
Felicity Hammond is an emerging artist who works across photography and installation. Fascinated by political contradictions within the urban landscape her work explores construction sites and obsolete built environments.
The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017The Space Between @ ART ROTTERDAM 2017
In specific works Hammond photographs digitally manipulated images from property developers’ billboards and brochures and prints them directly onto acrylic sheets which are then manipulated into unique sculptural objects. http://www.felicityhammond.com/
Lorenzo Venturi: Dalston Anatomy
Lorenzo Vitturi’s vibrant still lifes capture the threatened spirit of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market. Vitturi – who lives locally – feels compelled to capture its distinctive nature before it is gentrified beyond recognition. Vitturi arranges found objects and photographs them against backdrops of discarded market materials, in dynamic compositions. These are combined with street scenes and portraits of local characters to create a unique portrait of a soon to be extinct way of life.
His installation at the Gallery draws on the temporary structures of the market using raw materials, sculptural forms and photographs to explore ideas about creation, consumption and preservation.
Boyd Webb (born 1947) is a New Zealand-born visual artist who works in the United Kingdom, mainly using the medium of photography although he has also produced sculpture and film. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1988. He has had solo shows at venues including the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
Boyd Webb Abyssogramme, 1983
Initially he worked as a sculptor, making life casts of people in fibreglass and arranging them into scenes. He eventually turned to photography and his early work played with ideas of the real and the imagined. Through mysterious and elaborate compositions created using actors and complex sets built by the artist in his studio. In later years his focus shifted to a cool observational style, his work less theatrical and technique less elaborate.
James Casebere pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For the last thirty years, Casebere has devised increasingly complex models that are subsequently photographed in his studio. Based on architectural, art historical and cinematic sources, his table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms. Casebere’s abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative and oftentimes suggestive of prior events, encouraging the viewer to reconstitute a narrative or symbolic reading of his work.
Caspar David FriedrichJames Casebere
While earlier bodies of work focused on American mythologies such as the genre of the western and suburban home, in the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to institutional buildings. In more recent years, his subject matter focused on various institutional spaces and the relationship between social control, social structure and the mythologies that surround particular institutions, as well as the broader implications of dominant systems such as commerce, labor, religion and law.
Thomas Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates.
