Nicholas Nixon

Nicholas Nixon is an American photographer, one of the pioneers in new topographic. He began his career in 1970s as a photography student. He shot his first major series, City views, in Boston and New York, these were included in the New Topographic exhibition in 1975. One of Nixon’s key themes is time. From the beginning he worked on series that show the interaction between humanity and time passing, one of them being The Brown sisters series. Nixon approaches his subjects with great intimacy, showing parts of life the viewer can connect to.

Nixon’s style is very much defined by the large format cameras he uses (4 x 5, 8 x 10 and 11 x 14). Although it is a very slow way of working, the sharpness and clarity of the resulting photographs lets the viewer see the details otherwise unclear to a naked eye.

Image analysis

Nicholas Nixon first photographed Boston in the mid 1970s, as the city was in a process of transforming itself. His earlier photographs were taken from a distance, showing the unfamiliarity and disconnect from the city as he viewed it from an outsider’s perspective. This photograph was taken a quarter of a century later, from up close. The View of Washington Street, Boston, not only shows a few story building but also represents Nixon’s journey, from introduction to intimacy, in photography. Close up shots help the viewer feel the same familiarity and connection to the subject, the photographer felt at a time of the shoot. It draws in the viewer, highlighting the importance of what is being conveyed, and adds to the message by focusing on the details. New Topographics is all about how urban landscape photography reflects the presence of humanity in nature, as a part of nature. Just like buildings, humans also have walls. Nixon often likes to frame his photographs in a way so that the building is cut off from it surroundings or the rest of itself. This conveys that no matter how intimate and familiar we are with a person or a thing, there will always be a part of it that we can’t see. The light and dark windows also portray this idea. The dark windows are the focal point in this photograph due to the high contrast they pose compared to the rest of the image. They represent all that happens “behind the close doors”, all the thoughts we do not have the access to. The intense black creates a state of curiosity within the viewer. The bright windows really catch the viewers eyes and symbolise the insight we have into another person. The windows reflect the surroundings, emphasising how humans are a product of our environment and how what we are allowed to see by others isn’t necessarily what they actually identify with. The Windows gradually getting brighter show the transition from curiosity to enlightenment. Black and white photography strips away any colours that may distract the viewer from the meaning of the photograph. It also brings out the contrast, focusing on the details such as textures, shapes and patterns. Black and white photographs have a detaching effect as by strongly contrasting two colours we create a sense of distance which conveys struggle for connection. Especially in a big city like Boston, it’s difficult to identify with others and nature which as a result can make us feel empty, a void, just like the dark windows. The general tone of this image is on the darker side. However, this photograph is a mixture of low key, dramatic, deep, dark tomes at the bottom and some clear, high key, bright gray, almost white tones at the top. This really makes the photograph feel three dimensional as dark tones give depth and light tones make objects appear more closely. In addition, this makes the textures defined. Considering this photograph was taken outside, natural light was used. The camera was positioned in such way so that the top windows reflect the light, creating a brighter focal point as compared to the shaded windows at the bottom. Although the photograph is a bit on the darker side, I think it’s due to post editing choices rather than an unbalanced exposure as there is no loss of detail in neither the dark nor the lighter areas of the photograph. In this picture you we have a few lines. One of them is the, bright column in between the top windows. It gives a sense of movement and leads the viewers eye from the bottom to the lop of the building. This flows well with the two parallel columns on either side and juxtaposes strongly with the darker, perpendicular cordon. The overall mood of the photograph is serious, melancholic, and actually quite daunting as it might be hard for some to deal with the changes caused by modernisation of landscapes.

Lewis Baltz

Lewis Boltz, known for taking black and white photographs of parking lots, office parks was a young photographer who has come to influence a new movement in American photography during the time of urban expansion, The New Topographics. Baltz produced geometric, minimalistic and aesthetic photographs, mostly portraying bleakness of the man-made landscape of Southern California, where he grew up. His most known photographs do not include people, as if humanity ceased to exist, reflecting the power of humanity in architecture and pointing out the effects of urban architecture on humanity.

Image analysis

Claremont, 1973 represents the reflection of humanity’s relationship with nature through a man made object. Like most of his older photographs, this one is also in black and white. At an interview for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Baltz said “I used photography to distance myself from a world that I loathed and was powerless to improve.” By using the black and white format he conveyed a sense of distance, hopelessness and melancholy deeply. The type light used seem to be natural light on a cloudy day as we can see the clouds in the reflection, coming from behind and slightly to the left of the photographer because the shadows casted fall below and on the right side of the window. The ISO is most likely to be around 400 because we can start to see grain in the darker part of the image, it was probably chosen as it seems the day wasn’t too bright. The aperture used was most likely f/5.6 – f/8 because we can still see the poster and the inside of the house on the right ride of the window even though the photograph was taken from a far enough distance to capture the window and the wall. Considering the aperture I would say the shutter speed was around 1/60 as it’s not super sharp, we can see the tree in the background blur as its moved by wind. 1/60 is a speed at which you can still shoot hand held without blurring, hence the rest of the picture seems to be sharp enough. In addition I think this photograph might have been overexposed for creative effect, emphasising the emotion of desolation and sorrow. The tonal range in the reflection isn’t too wide as the darkest parts are only dark grey shadows without blacks. This means low contrast, low detail and texture. We can see some texture in the walls; it’s not very refined and feels fluffy rather than gritty. This can be seen as a result of the lower shutter speed whilst hand shooting and the big aperture in relation to distance. The window frame is the brightest part of the photograph making it a good leading line, bringing the viewers attention towards the reflection. The horizontal lines represent stability and vertical lines communicate strength, power and hierarchy, by moving the viewers eyes up and down the photograph. The bottom line is emphasised to create a starting point, and dynamics that take the viewers eye from the bottom left to the right which help transition into the scene behind the reflection. The leading lines connecting back together also creates a feeling of restriction as it separates nature and man. In this context it might be a response to environmentalists wanting to impede the urban expansion that was occurring. The frame being square helps convey human presence because geometric shapes are generally man-made. In addition, squares evoke feelings of stability. There is a lot of negative space around the window meanwhile the window itself is busy, providing us with more to focus on, making it the focal point. Negative space conveys the emotion of calm, peace, isolation and emptiness as opposed to positive space which induces the emotions of strength, intensity, chaos, power and movement. This results in good balance, highlighting the intention behind the photograph. No shadows, very little shapes, textures and low contrast makes the photograph very two dimensional. This creates detachment as humans are used to perceiving the world in 3D. In addition, the scene behind the window gives us an out look into human presence, however, the reflection of nature and human activity are overlapping. Overall the photograph conveys that human and nature should not be separated as it is futile.

“The New Topographics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that started a movement in American landscape photography. It was a response to environmentalism and the idealised landscape photography that praised the natural and elemental. The artists were inclined to lose the objective of romanticism and artistic beauty. Photographers such as Robert Adams and Stephen Shore found a different understanding of the natural world that showed landscapes and human activity as interconnected. Plain documentation of human presence in nature as a part of it.

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Mindmap of Ideas

My main ideas

An idea I have is to take images of monumental areas on the island such as tourist areas or areas that have changed drastically over time. I would then find archive images, via Facebook or Jersey Heritage, of the same places, at the same angles as my images ( I would find the archive pictures first), and put them together as pairs to show how Jersey is changing due to our effect on the island. This idea is linked to the over industrialisation of the island, and how the need for more and more money has pushed iconic and once loved local places away

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Social Divides and Poverty

Another of my main ideas for the Anthropocene shoot is to document the wealth divide on the island. This links to the Anthropocene project as the human impact of wealth and poverty is seen on the island via the lack of affordable housing, and the extreme housing crisis, contrasting with the mega-rich business owners and families who continue to build bigger and bigger houses and drive the divide further and further – whilst also destroying preserved areas in Jersey’s green spaces. I plan to photograph this by contrasting the new modern big houses on the island with the highrise, neglected buildings in Jersey. My aim with this idea would be to show the divide in the island created by the constant building and expansion of the island. I would then present my images as opposites juxtaposed next to each other, or potentially collaged with articles on the issue as one piece.

The last five years have seen the amount that households have to spend dropping, with income inequality between the rich and poor rising. Five years ago, the gap between rich and poor in Jersey was smaller than in the UK – today, Jersey is a more unequal society than the UK, with twice as many pensioners described as living on “relative low incomes”.

The figures are contained in the Household Income Distribution report, which measures how much money different types of households are surviving on. The report uses an international definition of “relative low income” or “at risk of poverty” – which is any household that receives less than 60% of the average (median) income.

In Jersey, that means £29,400 for two adults living together, £41,160 for two adults with two children, or £19,698 for a single adult. According to those figures:

56% of one-parent families are at risk of poverty.

29% of children are at risk of poverty.

28% of pensioners are at risk of poverty.

The report found that while Jersey’s tax and benefits system reduced inequality between the rich and poor, the effect was completely nullified by the high costs of housing.

Jersey’s housing crisis

One of my main ideas is to show the impact of overpopulation in Jersey and show its effect on how St Helier, St Clement and other parishes look like as an effect of this. I plan to do this by photographing big housing estates, high rise buildings, building estates, and anything such as objects or people I meet as I photograph these areas if I feel they fit with the idea of my shoot.

I have chosen to photograph the housing crisis because of how it is going to impact my future, but also how it impacts almost all residents on the island, including myself.

As the cost of living has risen, housing prices have skyrocketed: Jersey is currently the most expensive place to live in the UK, with higher house prices than London.

With Jersey’s population increasing, as well as the raising in housing prices, the need for social housing is increasing. – Many old blocks of flats and houses are being demolished, to be renewed with modern, state of the art apartments in their place. I have chosen to photograph a few sites of these demolitions in Jersey, to show how the island’s need for housing is affecting the landscape – and what is left behind once everyone is moved out.

For example, De Quetteville court has just been renovated – I plan to photograph the old flats which have been left after the new ones are now built.

Furthermore, the same thing has just begun at the Le Marais flats – they are refurbishing the old flats and completely modernising them. I plan to photograph the flats before their modernisation. – some have already been left, and the construction has begun, and I am keen to photograph the block that is left, compared to the ones still lived.

https://roklimited.je/projects/le-marais – a link to Rok Construction’s plans.

There are over 4,000 vacant properties on the island, recorded in April this year, and the number is increasing despite the desperate need for housing – The number of vacant houses in Jersey has increased by almost 1,000 in the last decade – despite a severe shortage of homes for islanders. A total of 4,027 private dwellings were identified as vacant on Census Day, which equates to a vacancy rate of 8.3%. Both the number and proportion of vacant properties have increased in 2021 compared to the last census in 2011 when 3,103 vacant dwellings were recorded – a vacancy rate of 6.9%.

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2022-04-19/census-finds-4000-jersey-properties-empty-despite-housing-crisis – a link to the article about this census.

I am interested to photograph both the vacant properties and those that are neglected by the government, as there seems to be no solution to the issue that is causing the island so much trouble. – this housing crisis means that my generation will have a lot of trouble finding housing on the island – there is already evidence of this, with many businesses unable to find accommodation for their staff.

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2022-01-05/its-just-too-expensive-to-live-here-inside-jerseys-worsening-housing-crisis – an article telling the story of someone on the Island who is unable to find adequate housing, like many others.

Urban and Urban Decay photography

As part of my ideas for photographing evidence of the housing crisis and vacant buildings, urban photography, and particularly decay photography is a key part of my inspiration.

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My aim for this project is to photograph the housing crisis in reality – I have researched it thoroughly and through this, I now know what sites and ideas I am going to carry out.

Collage

I really like the idea of using collage for my final outcomes, as this is a way of working I really like and I think works well, as well as the idea of juxtaposition and comparison in my outcomes to bring across the point of my work on Anthropocene. The idea of collaging my images I think would work well with the idea of photographing the housing crisis, bringing across the idea of overcrowding, by combining and overlapping my images of housing.

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After researching, I have found a style of collage I like: These are by artists like Laura Romero and Anastasia Savinova among others. I think that these two artists work very well with my chosen topic due to the way I would be able to use an outline of some buildings, and fill these with the images of the flats and houses I plan to photograph. For these collages to be successful, I would need to take images in a typology style – they need to be straight on to work as effectively as the collages of Anastasia and Laura’s work.

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Zines

Another idea I have for my presentation of my final outcome is the use of Zines.

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Mindmaps:

Here, I explored topics that I felt linked to Anthropocene along with some brief ideas on what I could photograph with those topics: i.e: I could photograph different types of plastic in the ocean.

When coming up with ideas for my photoshoot, I kept in mind some locations that I thought would work well with the project. I tried keeping my ideas open and quite vague in order to ensure I has a lot to work with so I could later explore them further and choose what I wanted to focus on the most for the project.

Moodboard:

Here, I gathered a mixture of different photos that I felt linked to Anthropocene and inspired me in some way

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Edward Burtynsky

“I have come to think of my preoccupation with the Anthropocene — the indelible marks left by humankind on the geological face of our planet — as a conceptual extension of my first and most fundamental interests as a photographer. I have always been concerned to show how we affect the Earth in a big way. To this end, I seek out and photograph large-scale systems that leave lasting marks.” – Edward Burtynsky

This is a photograph taken by Edward Burtynsky in 2017 of damaged cars in the Royal Purple Raceway, Texas. This image is part of a series of photographs from his ‘Anthropocene’ project/book published in 2018.

In this photograph you can see hundreds or even thousands of cars that were damaged by a flood and are no longer in use. There are around 12 visible blocks of land full of rows of different coloured cars. The only thing separating these blocks are some dirt roads (it makes the image look like a grid). Burtynsky took this image from a very high angle to show the amount of cars there are and destroyed land that could’ve been used for something more useful. It doesn’t capture the whole area, but it does look like it goes on forever.

This shows the amount of waste people create and their impact. We mass produce objects and when they are no longer usable we gather them together and leave them. This leads to the environment and ecosystems being destroyed in order to make space for more and more garbage.

Edward Burtynsky

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Dafna Talmor

Anastasia Savinova

Anastasia Savinova is a Russian multi-disciplinary artist that lives in Sweden. Her practice spans photography, collage, drawing, text, video, sound, and performance. With her architectural background, she holds affection for constructing and building. Her work is constantly circling around juxtapositions; the house and nature, walking to find new landscapes and digital rendering to create the images, the documented photographs processed together to make something unnatural. 

“My practice revolves mainly around spirit and memory of the place and ecology and the relationship with more-than-human world. The first theme is rooted in my background as an architect. This part of my practice explores authenticity of the place. Through building imaginative surreal spaces, I tell a story of the real ones. So this work is a documentary and a fiction at the same time. My other focus is on ecologies and the relationship of the human with the more-than-human world. In several projects I explore the relationship between human and mountain, human and forest, human and water, human and proximate and distant others.  I’m interested in how everything is intertwined and how we always are a part of something greater. I’m inspired by being on a journey, by seeing, smelling and touching the world. It’s not necessarily a far-away journey, it can be the same river bank over and over, and it’s a new journey every time.” – Anastasia Savinova, during an interview.

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Camilo Jose Vergara

 “For more than four decades I have devoted myself to photographing and documenting the poorest and most segregated communities in urban America. I feel that a people’s past, including their accomplishments, aspirations and failures, are reflected less in the faces of those who live in these neighbourhoods than in the material, built environment in which they move and modify over time.” – Camilo Jose Vergara

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What is Anthropocene?

Humans have been around we’ve been around less than 0.1% of the earths lifespan yet human-kind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans and altered the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts. Our population growing at an average over 200,000 people per day consuming excessive resources we’ve managed to alter more than 50% of the Earth’s Land.

The Anthropocene or ‘The Age of Humans’ represents a segment on the Earths timeline in which includes a rise of fossil fuels as an energy, Industrialization of Agriculture, Urbanization. We associate this time period with the impact that human activity has on the environment and how we have collectively caused a cascade of effects.

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How and why should we tackle Anthropocene through photography?

It’s important that creative subjects such as photography tackle the subject of Anthropocene to express the impact the Humans have on the Earth’s Land as photographs can change behaviour, stimulate understanding and create a sense of urgency that will move people to action. Photography is the universal language that speaks to the heart.

Not everyone wants to pick up a newspaper and read a whole article on how we all might be dead in 15 years time ( dramatic I know ) but images however are everywhere and on social media too. The fact that photography is visual means that it is suitable for all ages and can be interoperated in different ways. Because images hold so much power it is our way of communicating for help.

WILLIAM EGGLESTON

Born on July 27, 1939, William Eggleston is one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century. His portraits and landscapes of the American South reframed the history of the medium and its relationship to colour photography. “I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography,” Eggleston explained. “Not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it.”

 One critic called Eggleston “totally boring and perfectly banal.” He was, of course, completely correct, in a new topographics style Eggleston uses colour to present the ordinary and familiar- something I am interested in attempting to succeed in.

HENRY WESSEL JR

Snapshots capturing everyday life and subjects are a major form of vernacular photography, Henry Wessel Jr made “obdurately spare and often wry black-and-white pictures of vernacular scenes in the American West” Exploring the territory where nature and culture meet, Wessel’s deadpan pictures share the spontaneity and authenticity of snapshots, combining disarming frankness with irreverent humour. His low-key style matches the modest nature of his subject matter: he has found an inexhaustible richness in the aesthetics of the everyday, turning the least monumental of subjects into a kind of personal poetry.

Contrasting to Eggleston’s work which uses a large mix of colours, I also want to experiment with black and white images in the style of Wessel.

MY MOODBOARD

I would like my final outcomes to be in colour and monotone in the style of documentary photography.

Theme: Overpopulation and Overconsumption

Overpopulation: is the concept of a human population becoming too large to be sustained by its environment or resources in the long term. The idea is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may also concern regions. These two factors are related as high birth rates and population growth result in higher levels of consumption of resources (all other things being equal), which can have a negative effect on social, and especially sustainable development.

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Overconsumption: describes a situation where the use of a renewable natural resource exceeds its capacity to regenerate. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to the eventual loss of resource bases. The term overconsumption is quite controversial in use and does not necessarily have a single unifying definition. Overconsumption worsens climate breakdown and increases air pollution. It exhausts the planet’s life support systems like the ones that provide us with fresh water, and leaves us short of materials critical to our health and quality of life.

Visual Ideas

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Link to my project

I will be exploring how the increasing human population affects the earth, more going into the concept of how our raw materials are decreasing. With the climate changing due to global warming caused by the ‘human virus’ I will attempt to illustrate the ways in which man has changed the earth with each new life. This is a very current issue and I think that he should be addressed more in the photography world.

Additionally. I will be taking images in factories to demonstrate how much raw materials the human population uses, but also i will be demonstrating how some materials get recycled when I go down to the recycling centre, this is to show the positive side of Anthropocene.

Collage work

Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface.

I went through all of my photos and chose my best images before I began editing them.

My edits

In order to create these edits I turned my photos black and white and increased the contrast in order to make the shadows and highlights easily distinguishable from one another. Then, I darkened the shadows even further as I wanted to exaggerate the different depths and tones between everything in frame.

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I believe this is my most successful edit as there’s a variety of tones within the image due to the different shadows and textures, creating a visually interesting image. The highlights create a contrast between the darker tones, emphasising the pattern created by the shadows.

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I also think this edit is successful as I turned the image black and white then increased the exposure, making the sky in the background completely white which caused the darkness of the construction to stand out, emphasising the smaller details.

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