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.
I went onto the front just after sunset. I wanted to show that even on the coast there is signs of man-made products ‘destroying’ our landscapes.
I focused on taking images of the lights from St Helier which reflected on the ocean. Some would argue that it ruins the scenery and is an eyesore to the landscape. I personally believe that it enhances the beauty of the ocean. The lights that reflected on the sea from the city emphasises how calm and peaceful the ocean was at that time. In addition the lights bring a certain warmth to the image as the sea has connotations of being cold and isolated due to the vastness of it. The lights that are visible show the viewer that people live round there and get to witness its beauty everyday. I also believe that the lights create a nice contrast to the images; since I took the images at night without them the viewer would not be able to see where the ocean finishes and where the sky begins.
I also focused on the lights that were hung along the walkway on the sea front from St Helier to St Aubin. Although they are wires attached to metal poles, In the evening they bring a beauty to the darkness of night. During the day they may seem pointless, since the sun is beaming down on the island; but in the evening the whole of the front has a whimsical feel to it, as well as providing light for those walking down it in the dark.
I took images facing towards St Aubin and wanted to focus on the walls and piers going onto the beach. Not only are they an easy access to the beach, they carry a lot of historical moments on their shoulders. For example when Germany Occupied Jersey during the second world war, those piers would have been prepared for the Soldiers to leave the island should an attack be attempted. So, even though the concrete structures may look ugly along the sandy beaches, they aren’t necessarily just piers/walls/towers. They can be reminders of history.
Final images
Havre De Pas
For these images, I went to the incinerator in Havre De Pas. I thought this would be a good place to go because everything is very grey and dark. I also thought that it would go well with the new topographics work that we looked at earlier in the course.
I put the images in black and white to emphasise the monotone colours of the incinerator and to also fit in with the new topographics work which the majority of the time was in black and white due to the time period it became popular. The black and white also emphasises the general view on the building. Many people think that it is an eyesore, however this eyesore is needed for recycling and also helps the world with climate change just by existing.
This emphasises that even though the industrial things in our world can be ugly, we need to appreciate that they are made to make everyone’s life easier. This shows that we need to move with the times and focus on making our planet a safer place to live for all.
Final images
Favourite Images
These are my favourite images because I believe that they show the difference that industry has brought to our world. I particularly like the bottom left image because it is at a worm’s eye view; which I believe was a good way of showing off all the manmade things surrounding our coast line.
The above is an example of where I used a technique called exposure bracketing.
This is when a triptych or series of photos of the same landscape is taken but each with a different exposure.
I did this by positioning the camera, with a tripod in the exact same place. I then took the tree photos but each time changing the ISO. The first photo was had an ISO of 500 the second of 300 and the third 120. I then sliced and collaged the three images into one.
For this shoot, we went around the sports block and round highlands.
While walking around the sports building I focused on the grids and vents on the side of the building. The sports block is very monotone which relates back to New Topographics, where images were taken with the main subject of man made buildings rather than natural landscapes.
Definition: Artwork that is created in a public space, typically without official permission
Street art is very common in urban areas. It is also done for multiple reasons;fun, advertising and they can also have a political message behind them.
For example, the image on the left was made as a mural after the Manchester Bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in 2017. The bees around the heart represent the 22 victims of the attack.
The middle image is an image of David Bowie that was painted onto the side of an abandoned outhouse in the middle of Manchester.
The image on the right is of an advertisement for Adidas painted on the side of two shipping containers.
Images
Architectural Images
Often, industrial photographs show people building and making things – the aim is to capture the manufacturing process and the laborious jobs that are performed by workers.
Contact Sheets
Rated Images
Final Images
I put all my final images in black and white, I feel like this went well with some of the new topographics work that we looked at before. It also emphasises how all the colours are monotone and dull.
I focused on the man-made aspects of the buildings and the surrounding areas. I took images of things that had repeating patterns and symmetry to emphasise the fact that only man made things have perfect lines. Straight lines do not exist in the natural world.
Margaret was born in America in 1904 and died in 1971. She was a photographer and documentary photographer. Being a documentary photographer allowed her to see the changes in the world in terms of technology and industry. She also took pictures during the second world war, meaning she had to witness the horrors and torture that people were put through. Bourke-White was the first known female war correspondent and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during world war 2. In 1941, she traveled to the soviet union just as Germany broke its pact of non-aggression. She was the only foreign photographer in Moscow when German forces invaded.
She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviet’s five year plan,the first American female war photojournalist, and having one of her photographs (the construction of Fort Peck Dam) on the cover of the first issue of life magazine.
Margaret Bourke-White lived the life most of us only dream about. Well, maybe only photographers dream about. But to live life as fully as she did, could only inspire the uninspirable.
Image analysis
Margaret Bourke-White
The image is in black and white which could highlight the fact that the air is polluted because of the smoke coming out of all the factories and trains. The fact that there is very little contrast in the whole image emphasises the fact that there is little light visible to those that live in the house in the centre of the image. The lack of contrast also emphasises the lack of change in people’s lives each day. All they did was work, go home and work again. This is what happens now, however, working conditions were much poorer in the 1930s compared to nowadays.
Ansel Adams, born on February 20th, 1902 then later died on April 22nd, 1984, was an American photographer who was well known for his landscape photography due to it being very transparent in the detail that was portrayed in his images form the landscapes being very clear. Ansel began his photography carer not even knowing but at the age of 12 he got his first camera and took pictures of the Yosemite National park which was later used to show off his photography that was first published in 1921. Ansel work was starting to mature and become at its best in 1929 and 1942 and he became more established. The 1930s were a time in which he was experimenting and being more productive with his photography, expanding his photography technically by taking close up pictures of mountains, large forms and even detailed close ups with pictures of mountains to even factories. Moreover, this was when Ansel was getting his best landscape images from landscapes to close up images of leaves and flowers. In 1952, Ansel was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture which was a journal of photography, showing of its best practitioners and newest innovations in which he was also a contributor to Arizona Highways, a photo rich magazine. In June 1955, Ansel began his annual workshop at Yosemite which they continued to 1981, attracting thousands of students. During the final 20 years of his lifetime, the 6×6 cm medium format Hasselblad was his camera of choice.
As you can see from Ansel Adams photography, the landscapes in which he has taken photographs of is very well defined to the point where you can see every single detail of the surroundings in the landscape. Moreover, in his images you can see the clear contrast in the compositions of black and white, which goes to show hoe well Ansel Adams understand the contrast between black and white as you can see from his images, making every detail stand out from textures and surfaces.
“Unexpected Geology #18” – Ellen Jantzen (2018-19)
Altered landscapes focus on the process of using photoshop, or physically, in order to change the original composition of a landscape photograph. This may include changing the colours of the image, or in general changing the composition of the photo itself. For example cutting and pasting certain elements or adding forms of repetition or echo to the photograph.
Examples of altered landscapes
“Dust Storm” – Tanja Deman (2010)
Part of “Restore to Factory Settings” series – Felicity Hammond (2014)
Part of “Geometric Reflections” series- Victoria Siemer (2015-16)
Gabriele Basilico was an Italian landscape photographer, born in 1944, best known for his fascination with the changing landscape that was becoming urbanised. Before taking on photography as a profession, Basilico first studied to be an architect, which may explain his eye for the geometric structures showcased in his work. This striking architectural photography soon caught peoples eyes, including the French Government which commissioned him to record the transformation of the Transalpine landscapes, amongst other photographers in which he was the only Italian. Later Basilico also went on to document the effects of the war in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, which had previously been ongoing for 15 years.
Analysis
Gabriele Basilico
This black and white photograph taken by Gabriele Basilico showcases a curved building, located in the centre of the frame. This structure is framed by empty space both above and below the building, as the street shown appears to be desolate similar to the overcast sky. Here, it can be seen that Basilico took this photograph from a pedestrian viewpoint, looking slightly upwards. The leading lines in this composition are created by the curved, horizontal, white stripes that encompass the building, leading your eye from the right into the centre of the image, which is highlighted by the sun. In addition, these lines strongly contrast with the dark shadows underneath each balcony.
From a technical viewpoint, it can be said that Basilico only used natural lighting in order to capture this landscape, due to the fact it has been taken in a large open space outside, most likely at midday as the few shadows that are visible are going straight down, rather than at an angle. Furthermore, this means that the ISO setting used must have been a medium to low one, due to the large amount of natural light flooding the lens, allowing for a photograph that is not over exposed. This also could mean that Basilico used a fast shutter speed because of this large amount of light, also there are no visible blurs or movements here. It appears that the aperture was on a medium to low setting, as the focal structure is located far away from the photographer and the building in the background also seem to have a similar amount of focus placed on them.
Photo-Shoot
Contact Sheets
For this photoshoot I took pictures around the modernised areas of St. Helier, such as the finance and banking building along the Esplanade. Here I have highlighted the image I believe are my best, and wish to edit, and crossed out the images that are either over exposed or blurry.
Edited Images
For these photographs taken in the style of Gabriele Basilico, I started off editing them by converting the images into black and white, in order to make them look similar to Basilico’s film photographs. I also adjusted other aspects, such as increasing the contrast to create a juxtaposition between light and dark.
What- I’m gonna create photos of the new topographics for that I will take pictures of buildings and search for geometric figures
When- this shoot will be taken in the day during the photography class
How- exposure – 80 – IOS – 800
Where – around Hautlieu and highlands.
Contact sheets :
Pictures selected :
Edited:
final selection:
I chose this photo for the little details that can be found like we can see tree branches above the buildings and the reflection of that same tree on the windows of this building which recalls nature if you look close into the building through the window you can see a light bulb which is a human invention so in this photo we can see that nature (tree) is surrounded by human invention (the building). I therefore chose this images because it is the message that I wanted to convey with my image and then there are geometric figures (square and rectangle) like the windows, building, the front door … and we find the geometric figures in the images of the photographs of New Topographics Lewis Baltz or Bernd and Hilla Becher,
