After looking through my ideas I came up with a few ideas that I wanted to explore further via photoshoots and use for my final Anthropocene project:

Plan/Ideas:

One of my ideas was to take images around St Helier of a variety of things such as housing, littering etc so I could later mount everything on a map of the Parish, making some sort of constructed landscape, in order to present how bad humanity is hurting the environment. I would take some inspiration from Dafna Talmor and her work where she takes apart photos an puts them together in an abstract way in order to make the original image[s] almost unrecognisable due to the way she’s put them back together. However, for my project, I’d do it on a much larger scale.

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Another idea I had was to take a bunch of photos of litter and compile them together in order to create a human-esque figure that’s somewhat distorted to represent how humanity’s habits have had a negative on the planet. I plan on doing this by either making the faces in person then photographing them and improving them via editing or by photographing each piece of rubbish individually on a plain background and forming the faces in photoshop. I would take inspiration from the artist Nick Gentry and his work on compiling objects/photographs into faces, however, I would put my own twist on it, making mine look less human and much grimier.

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A third idea involves taking photos of rubbish and placing the final images next to one another, showcasing the griminess and sheer amount of junk that humans produce. I plan on editing my raw photos in order to exaggerate the objects in each image and hopefully make them look even murkier than they originally were. I plan on taking inspiration from Keith Arnatt’s work as he’s taken a variety of photos of things he’s found from decaying food itself and smaller objects that he’s retrieved and photographed separately in a studio.

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I also liked the idea of juxtaposing through the use of landscapes and wanted to try showing the contrast between nature and manmade buildings and how rural landscapes are slowly being over taken by humans and their impact. I was inspired by some of Felicity Hammond’s work, in particular 2 photos [shown below]. I like how she doesn’t attempt to make the environments look natural and change them, either through editing or via installing a piece, in order to create interesting and engaging images. I plan on taking some photos with both buildings and aspects of nature and will hopefully be able to create some photos similar to hers.

David Thomas Smith-

I made some images inspired by the work of David Thomas Smith, using images I had taken earlier. Since none of mine were taken from an aerial view, they are slightly different looking but I like the final result nevertheless.

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These were relatively easy to make and have unique compositions since they have been manipulated so much. I used a range of images as bases, from plants at the botanical gardens to construction sites, which I feel gives a nice variety to them. They appear almost alien-like with how unnatural they appear, especially the ones featuring the plants. This unnerving appearance could tie into the theme of Anthropocene, with how humanity is so focused on progress and expansion that they forget about the environment, so much that even seeing something natural feels strange.

Yao Lu-

I was also inspired by the work of Yao Lu, and wanted to create something based on his editing style.

My final image, I like how it came out but it took me a long time to get to the point where I liked how it looks. In the future I may look into doing photomontages using printed images as working with a mouse can be difficult.

Both of my chosen influences display a common theme of loneliness throughout their work- something that I am aiming to achieve in my response to the theme Anthropocene.

JOEL STERNFELD

Joel Sternfeld is an American fine-art color photographer. He is noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and helping establish color photography as a respected artistic medium. I have chosen Sternfeld as an inspiration as his use of colour while incorporating a banal aesthetic shows an unusual and somewhat surreal collection of images which tell a story. I want to try mimic this use of colour in my images.

JEFF WALL

Jeff Wall is renowned for large-format photographs with subject matter that ranges from mundane corners of the urban environment, to elaborate tableaux that take on the scale and complexity of 19th-century history paintings. His subjects are “cinematographic” reconstructions of everyday moments, fiction, and art history, which he refers to as “near documentary”.

TABLEAUX PHOTOGRAPHY- JEFF WALL

Tableaux photography constructs familiar narratives that refer to paintings, cinema, literature, and people from the past. In this way, it shows how contemporary life parallels with other times in history and in art. Photographers vary widely with how they create those narratives.

In Wall’s earliest photographs of the late 1970s and 1980s, clear references are made to some of the most famous paintings in the history of art since the Renaissance. Wall uses modern-day items and scenes to compose his photographs, but designs these compositional elements in ways that clearly hint at earlier landmarks, showing reverence to both art history and to contemporary artistic interests in the same space- as seen below in “The Destroyed Room” where references are made to Eugène Delacroix’s 1827 painting “The Death of Sardanapalus”

IMAGE ANALYSIS- JEFF WALL

Wall’s works are carefully staged and contain a lot of references, but are at the same time very accessible. With the use of transparencies mounted on lightboxes he refers to both cinema and commercial signs of consumerist culture. Through these materials and techniques, Wall has often been linked to minimal artists such as Dan Flavin, who is famous for his sculptural objects and installations using fluorescent lights.

The room photographed is staged, presented in a lightbox and created in a set used to represent a destroyed room. No apparent indications are given about the causes of the destruction, but it can be deduced that it was a woman’s room. The room shows a wrecked mattress at the centre, surrounded by women’s shoes and clothing, and other items. A cupboard, seen at the left corner, had his drawers open and searched. A small dancer figure is left intact at the top of the cupboard, perhaps as an ironic reference. The walls show also signs of destruction, particularly at the centre of the room. The left side of the picture demonstrates the artificiality of the image, showing joints and the external wall of the studio. The room itself is very light with the objects strewn around presenting an inconsistent colour scheme- adding to the mess of the room with the confliction of warm and cold colours. The image is taken from a middle point, assumedly using a tripod. The lighting is unnatural (as the image is staged) and there is a beam of soft light coming in from the upper right side of the image, showing itself on the back wall and presenting a shadow on the one intact object in the room- the small dancer figure at the top of the cupboard- which interestingly, compared to the painting Wall used as inspiration, the one figure in the same place (above the carnage) is also the one intact emotionally as they are not fighting

For my exam, i will be focussing on the theme of ocean pollution. I will be expressing my ideas through portrait photography within my project, to highlight the demolishing impact of human plastic waste within the ocean and too also add an empathetic effect on the viewer by switching the marine life to humans.

My main photographer will be Andreas Franke, I will be emulating Franke’s work while including parts from Carroll’s’ and Kruger’s work.

Things to collect:

• seaweed
• bottles
• bags
• flip flops
• wheels
• rope
• baskets
• nets

Artist 1- Andreas Franke

Andreas Franke, based in Vienna, is a passionate diver and award winning photographer.  For Luerzer‘s Archive he is among the 200 Best Photographers. He is the founder, owner and chief photographer of Staudinger+Franke  He worked for great brands like Ben&Jerry’s, Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, Gillette, Heineken, Nike, Visa or Wrigley‘s. His still life’s and his surreal effects are famous. In his pictures every little detail is planned precisely. There is no space left for fortuity. Andreas Franke is a traveller. He travels through the world and between the worlds. His job frequently leads him to several countries on several continents. So does his passion the scuba diving. In his pictures Franke crosses the borderlines between fantasy and real life.

Frankes work focuses on having a plastic free ocean.

“With my art, I don’t want to shock anyone, but rather to draw attention to a subject to make people think. I believe that humanity has learned to repress shocking images. The more frightening the pictures, the more ineffective they become in the end. Shocking images of sea creatures are not processed any further by many people. They have no relationship to the ocean, and therefore have no relationship to its living beings, and so they do nothing. Representing everything that is beautiful in this world, I show beautiful people. Representing our future, I show our next generation. I show both groups in the water among plastic garbage, which was collected along the coast of Italy in a single day. Through the next set of images I isolate individual plastic items from the first series and juxtapose them with facts to create more awareness about the extent of the plastic problem in our oceans.” – Andreas Franke

Photoshoot plan

Artist 2- Jeremy Carroll

Jeremy Carroll is an artist and professional photographer who wants to change the state of the ocean caused by man by bringing the problem to the forefront of people’s minds.

I will be inspired by these images here taken from Jeremy Carrolls album called ‘Marine Polution’ eatured in an exhibit called ‘Entanglement’.

Today’s state of Ocean pollution is affecting marine wildlife in a dramatic way. Us Humans are responsible for this disaster and we are yet to suffer the consequences. This photographic work translates the issues marine wildlife is facing in regards to marine pollution by creating a human analogy on plastic ingestion and entanglement. My goal is to open new eyes on the challenges that lay before us. – Jeremy Carroll

Jeremy Carroll is the artist and photographer behind this incredible collection of images featured in an exhibit called Entanglement that we first caught sight of on Treehugger. Each image depicts a human being caught up in the waste that is commonly found in seawater and along beaches such as discarded fishing nets, plastic bottles, grocery bags and flip flops. With the way things are going, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation predicts that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050. Even without hearing this shocking prediction we can tell things are looking grim with the horrifying and heartbreaking images of innocent turtles and whales found trapped in plastic or with a stomach full of garbage created and disposed of by humans. While many of us feel saddened by the harm inflicted on marine wildlife, many people still take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to justifying the use of disposable, single-use plastic products. Perhaps true empathy for the state of our oceans can only come when we imagine our loved ones caught up in these human-made messes. But empathy is only step one, the journey to cleaning up our oceans and reducing the waste we dispose will take action and conscious consuming.

Barbara Kruger

I will be taking inspiration from Kruger and her style of declarative captions and placing my own on my work to highlight the unjust human affects on the ocean and its sea life

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Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist known for her combination of type and image that conveys a direct feminist cultural critique. Her works examine stereotypes and the behaviours of consumerism with text layered over mass-media images. In 1979, Kruger developed her signature style using large-scale black-and-white images overlaid with text. She repurposed found images, juxtaposing them with short, pithy phrases printed in Future Bold or Helvetica Extra Bold typeface in black, white, or red text bars. Within a short declarative statement, she synthesizes a critique about society, the economy, politics, gender, and culture. Kruger merges the slick façade of graphic design with unexpected phrases in order to catch the viewer’s attention using the language of contemporary publications, graphic design, or magazines.

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here are some anthropocene photos i liked and took some ideas from for my own photos

ANTHROPOCENE MIND MAP

• An artist, and educator, working on creating ideas of political ecology and photography.
• Addresses complex issues within her work from history, questioning ethics and capitalistic models.
• Won an award and has held many exhibitions/had her work published.

Her work –

Analysis –

I think that this picture taken by Naomi White as part of her ‘Plastic Currents’ is a successful photo showing a theme of Anthropocene, which is what we are studying, because the photo could represent a glacier/iceberg due to the colour of it. This has been created, and this could have been created through the use of the plastic bag on top of a lightbox for a bright background which would amplify the effect where she has positioned it which creates it to be darker on the bottom and lighter on the top, through the use of layering the bag on top of itself in various ways. White has also used a subtle glowing golden/yellow light, layered underneath, which can be used to show how these areas are being effected more and more due to the Anthropocene and how global warming is slowly beginning to impact the earth more and more in places. I also like how Naomi White can make these plastic bags, which are becoming more dangerous, look beautiful as it would grab your attention and once you realise that it is a plastic bag and what she is symbolising, it would make you think twice when you go shopping to bring a reusable bag instead as you would have this reminder in your mind and how you’re contributing towards the Anthropocene.

In my own work, I’m going to use Naomi Whites style for inspiration when taking photos and I think that this will get me to consider the shapes that I am creating when using the plastic bags and how effectively I can use them. Similar to Whites work, I will experiment with using a lightbox and an infinity screen to create the bright, white background which she also has as I think that it is able to make the coloured plastic bags stand out well and catch your attention as well as highlighting all of the different creases which have been created by the bag.

I will be using photos I took for this project and also some industrial photos from the Harve des pas walk to la Collette. This is because the photos from that project link to what I am doing here, with building sites and industrial sites.

Sub selection

Using Lightroom’s flag feature, I selected around 110 photos from the Anthropocene and industrial project that I thought were best to use. I then edited the pictures so I could export them and start working on my ideas.

Born in 1990 Rolfsen is a Norwegian photographer and print maker who is best known for her landscape photographs of plastic bags and other types of rubbish that is known for polluting the environment and the sea. She shoots many photos using a canon D60 but she also uses her phone when it comes to some of her most popular work.

why I chose this photographer:

I picked this artist as I’m very inspired by her photos as they almost resemble waves and the ocean by her use of lighting as the plastic folding allows for shadows and highlights to be built into a conceptual image. Her style of photography will also push me to use new techniques when shooting for this project as it will make me try out new lighting and angles that i might not normally consider during a photoshoot. Further more I selected this artist as her work fits into my theme of fashion and consumer greed really well as most fashion brands come in plastic packaging when brought from an online website or in person in a store.

Examples of her work

image analysis

i chose this image from Rolfsen’s series “Plastic bag landscapes” as it was a series of images that helped raise awareness to the detrimental effects that plastic waste has on our oceans while she manages to highlight the beauty of the discarded bags that she finds on the streets of Oslo she hopes that her work helps viewers to take a closer look at their plastic consumption.

i really like the use of colour in this image as it pulls focus to different areas this image almost resembles a cave as the lower half has a war almost fire like sense to it and the top a contrasting ice feel to it.

how could I use Craig and Vilde’s work together

I can take normal portraits of a model then useing the photos from the Vilde Rolfsen inspired bag shoot cut out mask shapes on photoshop and place them onto my Craig McDean inspired shoot to create a final selection of images.

William Eggleston

Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston used colour photographs to describe the cultural transformations in Tennessee and the rural South. He registers these changes in scenes of everyday life, such as portraits of family and friends, as well as gasoline stations, cars, and shop interiors. Switching from black and white to colour, his response to the vibrancy of post-war consumer culture and America’s bright promise of a better life paralleled Pop art’s fascination with consumerism.

Analysis

This image captures a shot of reality, the black and white adds impact to the viewer making the photo more intriguing as it creates more attraction as other colours aren’t distracting you and allows you to focus on textures and you aren’t looking at other aspect the image includes.  

Eggleston’s “snapshot aesthetic” speaks to new cultural phenomena as it relates to photography: from the Polaroid’s instantaneous images, the way things slip in and out of view in the camera lens, and our constantly shifting attention. Eggleston captures how ephemeral things represent human presence in the world, while playing with the idea of experience and memory and our perceptions of things to make them feel personal and intimate.

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Mood board

For my second photoshoot, I went on a walk in Gorey and took pictures of some of the houses (so I can compare the housing from Gorey and town) and the beach. My aim was to take pictures of the green areas around there, however it started raining/getting dark and I was only able to take pictures of the trees by the beach. I also looked for trash to photograph on my way there.

Contact Sheet:

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