For my photo-book I have decided to base it around culture as I felt that this name is more effective than wealth and power as there’s a variety of cultures within the communities which have significant impacts on how the power and wealth people have has a varying impact on the overall community.
I personally feel that my book will look at its best if I use a hard cover and matte paper as this may make the photographs look vibrant. Additionally I also feel that the way in which I have laid out the photographs clearly show the different cultures as well as the effects that the power and wealth have on people in days to days life.
Overall I feel that I have successfully achieved what I wanted with this photograph and the topic around it this is due to the fact that each photo can be interpreted in multiple ways. Furthermore I also feel that each of my photographs have meaning behind them as the different people within some of my pictures all follow different cultures as well as having different levels of wealth and power.
For my first final print I have selected 3 photographs from my Dubai photoshoot and I’m going to print them out and back them on black paper to add details. I feel that this will work well as the black and white photo in the centre separates each photo from one an another.
Next I have chosen some photographs from my Water’s Edge photoshoot as I feel that these images may look better if I was to display them. Im going to pint both images out A3 and then again in A4 and use foam to mount them onto of the original photo.
Additionally Im also going to print of these images below in a 3X3 grid format as I feel all 9 photographs work well together. I also may raise several of the photographs within the grid to show which photos are better than the others.
For my virtual gallery I decided to use a template which I found on google photos. Then I went into photoshop and created a new layer and uploaded the image. Next I selected three images from my Dubai photoshoot and closely edit them by adapting the contrasts and levels in the photograph.
I first chosen this gallery to photoshop my images however the image was off a low resolution so I decided to use a different one which has a higher resolution. I feel that the virtual gallery clearly reflects what the photographs may look like in a real gallery.
I feel that these three images work well together as all the colours within them merge together, in addition I also feel that each photographs have different contrasts within it.
To start creating my photo-book I first went through my photoshoots closely and decide which photos to use and also which photos could be edited and developed more to add details; as well as making sure my photos were of a high resolution.
Next I started on deciding the layout of the photos and where I should place them on each page as I felt that the way in which you place them has an impact on the viewer, which creates more of an understanding on what your trying to portray within the photo-book.
After I decided on the layouts of the photographs I decided that it may add more affect if I added a black background colour as this won’t take any attention away from the photographs it will add detail, whereas if I was to use a bright colour background with my photographs it may take attention away from them which is not what I’m trying to achieve. To show the significant differences within cultures, linking back to power and wealth I wanted to put my images from my first photoshoot of derelict buildings in the first half of my book along with the part of my essay that relates, and then with the second half of my photo-book I wanted to show the contrast within cultures by using images that I took in Dubai. Along with the contrast between my first set of images and my second set of images taken in Dubai, there is also images that show contrast within Dubai itself- with the notable differences between the old Dubai town, and the new well known Dubai Mall.
I then went ahead and combined the two books to create one as I felt that this will help the viewer clearly see the contrasts between the two photoshoots. I used 2 pages to separate the photoshoots and applied a black background cover to keep the overall theme of the book flowing.
For this photoshoot I have decided to base part of my work on Nick Hannes as I feel that his set of images ‘garden of delight’ may show a clear and strong effect on ones opinions on the way in which different lifestyles; as Nick Hannes captured people doing their daily activities which shows the different ways in which people live in the community. To some extent I feel that Nick Hannes work has a powerful meaning to his viewers as each photograph he has taken is very different with a different meaning behind the photo.
Contact Sheet
My best photos from shoot 1 –
I feel that these are my best images at they clarity reflect the lifestyle in which someone who lives in Dubai may have. Additionally I also enjoy that these set of photographs all have specific connections and relations throughout. Nick Hannes work inspired my work as his worked helped develop my ideas and thoughts.
My Best Photos from shoot 2 –
These photos completely juxtapose the other images in which I took as they show that in Dubai although it can seem that there’s not much poverty due to the fancy cars you see, skyscrapers as well as numerous other shopping malls. These photos reflect a different community to the other photo shoot as they show different cultures as well as what one may call the “traditional Dubai’ / “The Old Town”.
Overall I feel that this photoshoot went significantly well as I manneged to explore different communities in which Dubai has as well as portray `Nick Hannes ideas. I decided to experiment to see if these photos would look better in black and white; however I felt that that was not the case because you couldn’t see the main details of the photographs as well as the different contrasts and tones throughout.
For the photographs that I took at the Waters Edge Hotel I’m going to adapt them to take out the bright tones and add darker, and harsher tones as I feel this will add more details to the photographs overall. Furthermore I also believe that this may change the opinions within the photograph in which people are seeing, as negative tones may affect the overall mood of the photo.
Editing process:
I decided to use the software on my laptop to edit and adapt the photographs I have taken. I first started by desaturating the images and then change the levels of the photograph to what each photo suits. Additionally I also adapted the white balance of each photo which added further contrast and detail.
I personally feel that these photos are the best outcomes of the waters edge hotel photoshoot, this is because each photo has specific detail. However although I have stated that I want three photos to have harsh and dark tones I also feel that several of my photographs may look better if they are in colour as they show different contrasts than to if they were black and white.
Photoshop ideas:
For this idea I decided that I’m going to use photoshop ti develop the levels of the photographs as well as change the overall colour. Im going to do this by using specific features in photoshop to create a “3D” effect. Furthermore I feel that I may also decide to experiment with photomontage and create a collage using photoshop.
Process
I feel as these four images work well together as all the colours blend together as well as the image which I used as an extra layer adds significant details; as you can see the stairs at a different angle which creates a more interesting photograph overall. I think I’m going to include these four images across a page in my photo book or one print in my final outcomes.
For this photoshoot I have decided to explore the ways in which specific abandonments can reflect the worth of communities which were there previously. I have decided to take photos on the abandoned hotel in bouley bay once called Water’s Edge Hotel which was once a place where so called ‘rich’ people gathered as a communities for holidays, birthdays, weddings etc. Furthermore now there is plans for one individual to knock down the old hotel and turn it into a multi billion pound house, this will therefore completely takeaway the minimal community from that area which there was left as well as memories which the hotel has connections with. I also feel that taking pictures of specific abandonments may refelct Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s project ‘The ruins of Detroit’
SHOOT 1 –
Shoot 1
I’m going to use photoshop to adapt/manipulate several photographs in different ways as I feel they may add more detail if I neutralise the tones or adapt the photos to black and white. However I’m going to go back to the Water’s edge hotel to capture more pictures due to the fact that I feel that seeing it on a later date to these photographs which I have already taken may change my opinions and alter the way in which I take my photographs.
SHOOT 2 –
BEST IMAGES –
Overall I feel that within this shoot which I conducted I have successfully shown the power in which this hotel has within it and the abandonment which is clearly reflected by the way in which it has been left for several years. Additionally I also feel that the communities that used to go visit the hotel may struggle seeing one construct and demolish to rebuild a house for one superior individual.
How does Marchand and Meffre explore how wealth and power create divides within communities?
Almost 90% of the world’s wealthiest adults live in North America, Europe, and Japan. A wealthy individual, community, or nation has more resources than a poor one, while having access to resources can be a personal bonus for the rich and powerful, for others it is not. We are now living in the Anthropocene age- which means human influence on the planet is so profound and terrifying it will leave a lasting impact on the planet for thousands of years to come. Emissions from flights stay in the atmosphere and will warm it for several centuries, meaning the excessive travel of wealthy, known individuals are a main contributor to the ongoing global warming issue. Donald Trump; has been dubbed, “the person responsible for the most carbon emissions in the world.” With the power that Donald Trump possessed while president he not only enacted policies that negatively affect the environment, but his personal choices are also wildly anti-environmental. Wealth and power are one of the things that divides us most as humans, while people can argue that having money does not make you powerful- the wealthiest people in the world, are not running countries and creating laws, like many world leaders, who’s wealth barely scrapes the surface of the sort of wealth Jeff Bezos has, wealth does make you powerful. By being wealthy, you have something that others want, that is where the power lies. Jeff Bezos spent 5.5 billion dollars to go to space for 4 minutes; this same amount of money could have saved 37.5 million people from starving in 2021. For the practical side of this project, I have decided to take pictures that I believe show Anthropocene and abandonment to communities as well as the divide of rich and poor communities.
I chose the style of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre to take inspiration from while taking images for this project. They are two French photographers who met through a mutual interest in contemporary ruins. They began their collaboration in 2002 by exploring Parisian urban remains before their interest took them to Detroit, where a thorough exploration of the city lasting five years resulted in their seminal work, ‘The ruins of Detroit’. Their other projects after that include ‘Theatres’ where they discovered and documented the sorry state of theatres they came across while travelling around America. Their work responds well to Anthropocene as it is filled with dull colours, mostly neutral tones like beige and creams. Their images show Anthropocene well as it mainly focuses on buildings that has been built from wood and such materials that have been sourced from the Earth and then abandoned to rot and ruin the landscape. This has a massive impact on landscapes and the Earth as people are cutting away nature and ruining habitats to build homes and buildings that are abandoned and left to decompose. There are over 19 million vacant buildings in America where the land could have been left untouched. I have chosen these photographers to discuss as I believe that I may be able to find vacant buildings in Jersey that I can take images of. It is no secret that Jersey is the home of many wealthy individuals, this can be seen first-hand through the images I have taken for this project. For my first photoshoot I decided to photograph The Water’s Edge Hotel a vacant hotel at Bouley Bay, what was once a beautiful hotel just metres from the beach is now an eyesore on the landscape. While the hotel has been sitting vacant since 2013 there have now been controversial plans to convert the 50-room, 4750sq-m hotel into one home for a wealthy individual. Not only is this taking away what was once a place where families to spend days together and tourists to visit the island, it is also going to make the beach surrounding the hotel uninhabitable whilst the demolishment of the building takes place. Senator Sam Mezec said, “I think this is sad. It’s essentially the commoditisation of our coastline for the benefit of an extremely small number of rich people, rather than for the benefit of all the people who want to enjoy this area and we’re seeing this in other parts of the island too like Greve de Lecq and at some point, we’ve got to say no and say our coastline is one of our most beautiful assets.” This is just a small instance of wealth and power dividing the community of Jersey however it is still controversial. Water’s Edge Hotel (first image) Computer generated image of new plans (second image).
I decided to mainly focus on Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s project ‘The ruins of Detroit’ as I think that the images, they captured in that project tell a lot of stories from just an image of an abandoned room and can be left open to interpretation. I also thought that I would be able to likely recreate and be inspired by these images more than the images from their project ‘Theatre’ as the images in Ruins of Detroit possess more similarities to buildings that I am able to capture images of in Jersey than their Theatre project. For my photoshoots of abandoned buildings, I focused on taking images in a similar style, by taking my images in a natural lighting and focusing on the dull tones in the images, another key similarity between our images is that the interior of the building I focused on are very derelict and falling apart a lot like the images in ‘The ruins of Detroit’ you can tell they have all been vacant for a long time and taken a lot of damage over the years from people intruding.
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre – The Ruins of Detroit
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are two French photographers who explore and question ruins. Through their photography, they show the vestiges of an era and the evolution of our societies. In an interview they described why they photograph what they photograph. “To give a rather broad definition of what we do, we are interested in buildings that strongly embody an era and a society and we observe their metamorphosis. The 19th and 20th century buildings often reflect the great transitions that are still underway today, like our series on the American theatres, which are examples of entertainment architecture produced on an industrial scale. These auditoriums, with their eclectic decorations, provided an attractive form of self-staging of the identity of a country that is still young. We then observed the city center movie palaces, huge assembly places, which declined due to suburbanization, the mass arrival of television – of individualized leisure basically – and to see some of these movie halls turned into churches, shops, shopping centers, etc. Through the prism of a type of place, we see an entire alternative modern history of our societies. That’s probably what makes us interested in these “modern” ruins, because they resonate directly with what we know.” I believe that throughout my work I also explore how once lively buildings turn derelict and then end up converted into something more modern and self-serving than a place that was once built for a community. That is why I have chosen these photographers to take inspiration from.
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s work
My Photographs – inspired by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre
Furthermore I have also decided to look at Jacob Riis he was a Danish-American social reformer, journalist and social. Within his work he contributed to multiple things; one which stood out to me was ‘How The Other Half Lives ‘ this is because his photographs have a strong and clear impact which adds key specific detail and also leaves his photographs left open to interpretation. Jacob Riis was one who decided that within his work he is going to publicized the serious crisis in housing, as well as the lack of good eduaction and poverty at the height of European immigration to New York City in the late nineteen century. In 1911 Riis stated in the San Jose Mercury that he was “I was a writer and a newspaper man, and I only yelled about the conditions which I saw. My share in the work of the slums has been that. I have not had a ten-thousandth part in the fight, but I have been in it.” As his work was so successful he was able to befriended President Theodore Roosevelt and later managed to change the law and create societal improvement for some the poorest in America. This clearly demonstrates how clear and strong the impact that his photographs had on individuals as he was able to have a strong enough impact for one to change laws and regulation to improve the overall quality of life.
Jacob Riis – How the other half-lives.
As well as those photographers I also chose to focus on Robert Adams. Robert Adams was born in New Jersey and moved to Colorado. He was a professor of English literature for several years before fully committing to his photography career in the mid 1970s. He also released multiple books such as The New West, Summer Nights, Los Angeles Spring as well as several others. In 2009 Adams was awarded the Hasselblad foundation international award in photography. Robert Adams bought a 35mm reflex camera in 1963 and this is when he began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. Personally, I find Robert Adams work very inspiring due to the fact that each photograph in which he has taken is very unique in their own particular ways and has different morals behind each photograph. However, they are all very similar to each other due to the minimalistic contrasts within the photos and the mutual tones used. Additionally, I also feel that you can clearly see the main focus in each photograph as well as the non-focus which is mainly based on the backgrounds. In my opinion I feel that the photographs which he has taken involving architecture are highly more interesting for one to look at as each building may portray a different story of who may coincide there. For my photoshoot, I took images in the style of Robert Adams, I went into the side streets in St Helier and captured images of buildings that interested me, I then converted all of my images into black and white to match Robert Adams photography style. To a degree, all of Adams’ work is simple, but deceptively so. Since he first came to public attention in the mid-1970s as part of the New Topographic movement, his subject has been the American west: its vastness, its sparse beauty, and its ecological fragility. You could say that Adams was a pioneer of eco-conscious photography, but that would be a very reductive way of describing an artist whose vision has remained constant, and constantly rigorous, and whose work demands close attention – and a degree of patient attentiveness – from the viewer. I enjoy the simplicity of Robert Adams images (pictured below) as whilst being sparse there is a captivating feel to the way they have been taken which makes you want to see more. The photographs below are very similar this is due to the light dark tones which he has used to maybe add contrasts and details. Additionally I enjoy the way that he decided to not just capture the houses and also capture the people that may live there as this adds to the story of the photographs.
Robbert Adam’s work
I like these images a lot as I feel the monochromatic colouration of them match Robert Adams images well. While in some of his images he has darker shades in they are mostly filled with light greys and white shades and I feel these images are a good representation of how he has inspired my practical work for this project.
My Photographs – inspired by Robbert Adams
Additionally, I have researched an artist named Nick Hannes as he took photos of the rapid change in which Dubai has had over several years. This includes photographing luxury cars, nightlife as well as also portraying the way in which the lower class people live and the lifestyle in which they have. The photograph below shows several construction workers waiting for the collective bus transport to take them back ‘home’ to their labour camps. The wall behind them may suggest that they could be separated from ‘wealthier’ community as you can see the sky scrappers behind them which may either be offices or apartments of wealthy people. Furthermore another factor to why I think that this wall creates a clear divide is that there’s graffiti on it which states ‘FREE YOUR MINDS’ this may suggest that the workers may believe that social status does not matter to them. I feel that Nick Hannes kept this photograph in colour as if he was to adapt it to black and white it may not have had such a strong impact on the viewer, in addition the use of natural lighting is very effective as I feel the tones and shading would be very different and not as achieving if it was taking using artificial light.
Nick Hannes – Garden of Delight
In my own practical work, I have taken equal inspiration from both Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre as well as Robert Adams. I have taken photoshoots in both of their styles, first photographing derelict buildings and then moving onto buildings that are inhabited. The differences between my two photoshoots is that I left my first set of images that are inspired by Romain Mefree and Yves Marchand in colour as the dull colours in the image create a more abandoning and vacant feeling than when they are in black and white. However, after taking a closer look at the images I captured for my Robert Adams inspired photoshoot I decided to not only convert them to black and white to match his images but to also bring out the simplicity of them without overbearing colours. Finally I’m also going to take photographs that I have been in inspired by Nick Hannes as I feel that all his photos have different interpretations making the photographs genuinely more interesting for the viewer overall; one would say his work passes a strong message that money and power may create a divide within the communities. This may be due to the variety of income in which different people earn as people who are of higher income may feel more empowered when this shouldn’t be the case.
How does Marchand and Meffre explore how wealth and power create divides within communities?
Essay Question:
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
My area of study is going to be base around the power wealth and cultures in which the different communities in the world are surrounded by. I analysed Nick Hannes work as I felt that his work highly inspired my second photoshoot.
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography, visual and popular culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Photography an art form began in the late 1830s in france and became publicly recognised ten years later.
Before photography was first created people started to experiment and figure out the basic principles of lenses and the camera. They were able to project the image on the wall or piece of paper, however at that specific point in time no printing was possible at all. A Camera Obscura is what people used to process their pictures in which they took. The Camera Obscura was invented around 13-14th centuries and it is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. Light coming in through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, like the wall of the box.
The first photograph was taken in 1825 by a French inventor Joseph Nicéphora niépce. His photograph show a view from a window at Le Gras.
Joseph Nicéphora niépce
The exposure had to last for eight hours, so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west appearing to shine on both sides of the building in the picture. This lead to the photograph being more interesting for one to analysis and look at.
Colour photography was explored throughout the 19th century, but didn’t become truly commercially viable until the middle of the 20th century. Before this colour in photographs wouldn’t last for a long amount of time a would start to fade very quickly to become degraded. Several methods of color photography were patented from 1862 by two French inventors: Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charlec Cros, working independently.
an image of a tartan ribbon – James Clerk Maxwell
The first color photo of an image of a tartan ribbon (shown above), was taken in 1861 by the famous Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who was famous for his work with electromagnetism. Although his work had great influence on the photo industry, Maxwell is not remembered for this as his inventions in the field of physics were more remembered than his photography accomplishment.
The first ever picture to have a person in it was Boulevard du Temple by Louis Daguerre, taken in 1838. However the exposure lasted for about 10 minutes at the time, so it was barely possible for the camera to capture a person on the busy street.
