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plan – NEW TOPOGRAPHICS

PLAN

PHOTOSHOOT #1- HARVE DE PAS + INDUSTRIAL ESTATES

I plan to conduct a photoshoot at Harve De Pas swimming pools as its banal aesthetic and bright colours is perfect for images inspired by William Eggleston.

PHOTOSHOOT #2- TOWN

I also plan to walk around St Helier and St Aubin’s taking pictures of what interests me and what reminds me of William Eggleston and Henry Wessel Jr.

PHOTOSHOOT #3- COUNTRYSIDE + GREENHOUSES

For my final photoshoot I plan to take pictures in greenhouses and of houses in the countryside- specifically in St Johns, Trinity and St Ouens.

Examples of my inspirations work/mood board

Compare and contrast to artist reference- anthropocene

Joel Sternfeld- The Masjid-Al-Rasul, 11211 Central Avenue, Watts, Los Angeles, California

As contributing to Joel Sternfeld’s style, this image has a strong colour scheme- with the warm colours of the carpet, sofas and walls conflicting with the cool fluorescent lights and blue curtain hanging from the ceiling. The blankness of the room gives a sense of abandonment- although the room is not abandoned.

I am using my image of the penthouse as a comparison where similarities include yellow walls conflicting with the blues and greens of the outside and the ceiling. Both images show a sense of abandonment and eeriness however mine is an image of an actual abandoned room while Sternfeld’s is a dull room in the Masjid-Al-Rasul mosque in Watts, where “members of the Bloods and the Crips, rival Los Angeles gangs, negotiated and signed a truce on April 26, 1992”- both images share this sense of story where the room, although empty, has been used for and been privy to private, personal and intimate events which will never fully be known.

Evaluation and Critique- anthropocene

FINAL IMAGES

EVALUATION

I like the yellow contrasted against the blues and greens of the nature through the window and the blue of the ceiling windows while attention being drawn to the dark tones of the holes in the walls which present a sense of depth as attention to drawn to the back of the room. The framing of nature through the window is interesting as the destruction and abandonment

CRITIQUE

The image is quite plain in its composition with not much happening. There is also a lot of darkness in the corners and top of the image as there are shadows and dark wood which looks unusual against the tone of the yellow.

EVALUATION

The image has depth as attention is drawn towards the back of the image, the theme of yellow is continued which looks interesting against the dark of the wood. The texture of the wood and floor is also very visible which is interesting to look at especially since there is such a large variety of colours.

CRITIQUE

The left side of image is overexposed and provides a large contrast between the dark tones of the wood, I could’ve cropped this out but the dimensions of the image would have been unusual.

EVALUATION

I like this image as destruction is shown throughout the image, with the ceiling tiles on the floor and the holes in the ceiling and walls, along with the obvious yellow motif.

CRITIQUE

The outside is overexposed which if I changed then the image would have been too dark to notice the yellow walls and soft lighting coming from outside.

EVALUATION

Attention is drawn towards the dead plant as it is the only slanted thing in the image, I find this interesting- especially as it is in front of the doorway- as it could symbolise the death of nature making way for human activity. I think this images has the best flow to it as composition-wise it is the most classic composition.

CRITIQUE

The right side of the image is overexposed but I didn’t want to lose the soft light coming in from the window so I decided to keep it.

EVALUATION

I like how the stains and graffiti on the walls is visible alongside the obvious signs of human interaction with the room contrasted with the view of nature outside the window.

CRITIQUE

The image has quite a plain composition and the outside is overexposed.

FINAL ARRANGEMENT OF IMAGES

My final grid of images

EVALUATION

I like the contrast between the plain rooms scattered with destruction against the black and white original image of the room. I also believe the negative space between the images works very well as it looks like a blue print- with the slight motif of nature/the outside in every image compared with only viewing nature through a derelict room is interesting especially in the nature of a blueprint.

CRITIQUE

Overall I do not like my final set of images, I preferred my last mock exam as with the theme Anthropocene it mainly focusses on nature and how humans are changing the world- I prefer taking images of people as I find it more interesting.

IMAGE EDITING/ EXPERIMENTATION-anthropocene

Within editing my images I wanted to present derelict buildings and abandonment through Sternfeld’s use of colour. A lot of the rooms in the derelict hotel I was photographing were yellow, leading to an interesting colour scheme throughout some images.

EXPERIMENTATION

First I experimented by changing the images to black and white.

A few examples of my images in black and white

I realised quickly that changing the images to black and white means I lose Sternfeld’s influence and the images quickly became boring so I decided to keep them in colour and concentrate on the yellow motif occurring throughout the images.

To maintain the yellow in the images I changed the temperature of the images to between +2 and +12, with this same rule going for the saturation and vibrancy of the images, this was so the images could be consistent in their colour scheme as some rooms were brighter than others.

Before and after editing

I edited all the other images similarly, making sure to erase areas of over/underexposure depending on the lightning of the room by changing the exposure and contrast. I also levelled the images to ensure that the horizonal lines were straight.

#2 SUB-SELECTION OF IMAGES AND EDITING

This was my favourite room in the hotel, in all my images I wanted to do minimal editing so I only turned up the temperature of the image to bring more notice to the yellow of the walls and also turning up the contrast, blacks and shadows in the image to exaggerate the holes in the walls. Turning down the whites also meant the slight element of overexposure was taken away from the view outside of the window- showing nature which I found a really interesting contrast in.
For this image I really liked the colour of the wood panelling so I turned up the saturation and vibrance to show the wood’s colour alongside the (once again) yellow of the walls. There was slight overexposure in the left side of the image so I turned the exposure down however some overexposure still remains but I decided to keep it in as the sharp white of the outside wall gives the image more depth as the background is quite dark and quiet.
Similarly to the first image, the only thing I really wanted to do for this image was keep its yellow theme while bringing notice to the damage in the room- especially the fallen pieces of ceiling tile as they looked like a mosaic on the floor. The outside is slightly over-exposed however I like the jump from the yellow to almost pure white outside the window.
I turned the contrast on this image up to make the stains on the walls more apparent (e.g the dark rectangle on the wall where a mirror once was) and turned the temperature up to make the yellow more apparent. I also turned all the highlights down to make more use of the shadows and how dark the room was apart from the soft glow coming in from the window.
I really like the composition of this image, the plant leaning against the wall gives a break from all the horizonal and vertical lines- drawing focus away from them making the plant and the doorframe the main subjects. I did minimal editing in this image as I liked the way the lighting was coming in with soft shadows being displayed on the floor and ceiling compared to the dark of the background.
The images I decided to take out

After editing all my images I did another sub-selection- finding inspiration from Sophie Calle’s ‘The Hotel, Room 47’, more specifically, the way Calle displayed her work- presented in a grid titled the room number of the hotel room she was photographing.

An example from Calle’s ‘The Hotel, Room 28’

The obvious similarity is that Calle and I are photographing a hotel however Calle’s work is displayed alongside extensive descriptions of what the room was like and the ownings of the room inhabitants and presented as a catalogue of documentary-style images in grid format- which I would like to do in photoshop as I really like the irony of displaying images of a derelict area as if it was brand new.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP EDITING

First, I printed and cut out the images I wanted to use in a set and arranged them by hand until I liked the arrangement- next I tried to recreate this arrangement on photoshop.

First I opened a plain A4 page on Adobe Photoshop and opened all my other images on separate tabs.

Then I dragged each image onto the plain white page and resized and arranged them until they fit the page how I wanted it to be like.

The images ended up on the page like this however I was unsure of this layout so I continued with some layout experimentation.

#1 experiment
2# experiment- black and white image found here

I really like the inclusion of negative space in my experiments as it reminds me of blueprints of building plans- an interesting contrast between ruin and new buildings.

experiment #3

I also became interested in juxtaposing images of the hotel abandoned with images when it was still in business, as seen in the image above where a picture of the same penthouse room in the 2000s is distanced from pictures of the room in its current state by negative space- the black and white of the old image also being an interesting comparison as black and white is often linked to age- with old buildings often having been demolished quickly to make way for new buildings however in this case the black and white photo is showcasing the hotel when it was in a much better state compared to the yellow centred images- ironically, yellow being the colour that represents vitality and youth.

experiment #4

I ended up liking the last experiment (#4- seen above) the most as the arrangement reminded me of Sophie Calle’s work while the use of colour to Joel Sternfeld’s work and the depth of the images to Jeff Wall’s ‘The Destroyed Room’- especially in the bottom middle image. The negative space adds some abstraction to the piece which I find interesting as well.

Photo-shoot Action Plan anthropocene

As I wanted to concentrate on urbanisation and destruction. I decided I was going to do this by photographing abandoned, derelict buildings to show the discarding nature of human adaptation as there is always something newer and better than the last. To gain a variety of images I also plan to walk around St Helier, St Clements and St Johns to get pictures of a New Topographic style.

PHOTOSHOOT #1 PLAN

The derelict hotel I plan to photograph

I plan to photograph a hotel which has been closed down since 2013, I am planning to go on a light, sunny day to get sharp contrasts in my images so there is an exaggeration on shadows and damage of windows etc.

One of the rooms I am interested in photographing when I go there
Another room I am interested in photographing- the penthouse

PHOTOSHOOT #2 PLAN

Abandoned park I wish to photograph

I plan to walk around St Helier, St Clements and St Johns- I have a few places of interest planned such as abandoned greenhouses, a derelict park which has some fire damage along with some residential areas which may be interesting to photograph.

Small mood board of areas of interest to me

introduction to Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is a new, present day epoch, in which scientists say we have significantly altered the Earth through human activity. These changes include global warming, habitat loss, changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soil, and animal extinctions.

Pengah Wall #2, Komodo national park, Indonesia, 2017, Edward Burtynsky

Modern Anthropocene art centres on the recognition that we have entered into the “Anthropocene”—a new geologic era marked by the impact of human activity on the earth. Working in a variety of modes, ranging from practical demonstrations and shading into other current tendencies like social practice, relational aesthetics and environmental activism. Anthropocene art expresses the hope that art can point the way to a more ecologically sustainable future or spread awareness about political and environmental issues such as climate change, urbanisation and wealth divides.

MY IDEA OF ANTHROPOCENE

I have been heavily inspired by the New Topographics movement of the 1970s where stark images of mundane but oddly fascinating topography was a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental. I would like to capture places reclaimed by nature like derelict buildings that have become overgrown and abandoned to show that mankind erodes nature to make room for a more industrial world.

Joel Sternfeld, On this site

I want to concentrate on urbanisation and how the human nature seems to be dominating, destructive force on the world. I want to make the point of the loneliness of humans in the world as we are destroying and disregarding all that is around us in search for the next brand new, mass-produced fixation. I would like to do this by photographing abandoned, derelict buildings to show the discarding nature of human adaptation as there is always something newer and better than the last.

IMAGE SELECTION, SUB SELECTION- anthropocene

IMAGE SELECTION

I went through the contact sheets and colour-coded the images I was interested in using for editing to make my final selection of images easier

From this selection I ended up with around 90 images that I believe have potential after editing and more sub-selections.

Some of the images I have previously selected

I then started my editing process by going through my first selection of images and doing some basic editing on them (levelling them so they are straight, cropping them to the part of the image I am interested in etc)

While doing this basic editing I colour-coded the images I was most likely to use as my final images.

At this stage of selection I was considering making several typologies as I have many images of similar things, such as windows etc. However this felt too liminal with a lack of meaning, however I may look into triptychs, grids and juxtapositions as display and selection ideas.

for example- window typologies

I continued with my selection by going through my images and collating 17 images I was most confident in, I colour-coded these images red

Below are the images unedited however these are not my final pieces as I still need to make another sub-selection which I will do during editing.

Photoshoots + contact sheets- anthropocene

PHOTOSHOOT #1

Contact sheets from photoshoot

My first photoshoot involved going to a derelict hotel and taking photographs of anything that interested me- when doing this photoshoot I kept Jeff Wall’s “The Destroyed Room” in my head as immediate inspiration however as Wall’s image was staged I struggled to find rooms which were not empty and had the depth that Wall’s image had.

My favourite images from that photoshoot

PHOTOSHOOT #2

Some contact sheets from the photoshoot

My second photoshoot involved walking through St Helier, St Clements and St Johns to find images more connected to a new topographics subject- so houses and buildings with a banal aesthetic which remind me of Joel Sternfeld’s work. This photoshoot ended up being a lot smaller than the first one as I realised I wanted to explore the nature of derelict buildings and abandonment instead of new topographics- using Joel Sternfeld’s colour aesthetics in my work.

My favourite images from this photoshoot- the middle one especially reminding me of Joel Sternfeld

Artist References / Case Studies ANTHROPOCENE

My moodboard of influential images featuring Edward Hopper, Joel Sternfeld and Jeff Wall

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

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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.

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JEFF WALL

The destroyed room, Jeff Wall which I am using as a case study

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”

Eugène Delacroix – The Death of Sardanapalus, 1827

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