Much has been written about Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi. First published in 2004, it is a landmark publication in the Magnum photographer’s career, which propelled him to international recognition and notoriety. First editions of the photobook are highly prized items today. At a talk in London in 2017, in conversation with Sean O’Hagan, Soth reflected on the work, almost 15 years on, and how he began to make what would eventually become the tightly-edited tome, Sleeping By the Mississippi.

He began to follow the Mississippi River in his car, driving from place to place, letting himself progress towards locations he had vaguely researched and “using the river as a route to connect with people along the way.” These were the early days of the web and the development of his process ran parallel to the growth of the internet. “It was like web surfing in the real world” he says, “it was like trying to ride a wave.”

I really like this book overall as there is an interesting mix between portraits and landscape images, all of these images throughout the book are filled with more cool toned images, this will be because of the climate that the photographs were taken in, and this helps the reader appreciate the lengths Soth went to to create this book.

Overall, the book is quite short, this may be a reflection of the fact that Soth’s journey across the Mississippi River came with some challenges, this image above is a great way to illustrate the challenges with living in these harsh areas, as the mountainise regain is not perfect for human civilisation, with the gas station being a physical reflection of how living in these areas can be not only physically changeling but lonely as well.

I like the simplicity of this image, and how there is one blank page with an image description, this means that all of the attention is faced onto the second page with the photograph, the fact that an image description is included means that Soth is making his work more readable for everyone, and more importantly making us consider his thought process behind his book more.

I really like that Soth has randomly placed landscape, portraits and still life type images throughout his whole book, this means that he has followed the rule of always having a pattern/ balance throughout his whole book, and this means that some aspects of his book are predictable. Furthermore, this plays into this simple looking book being increasingly complex, as the still life kind of images are of objects/ settings that have been found in different people’s homes along the Mississippi.

This portrait, in my opinion, is one of my favourite one that Soth has placed into this book, I think this is because of the fact that the colour of her hair is the same colour as the background of the last page of the book. I would like to replicate this kind of balance in my own photobook, also the angle of her face is one which suits her jawline and her neck being most straight matches with the black straight fencing poles that are placed in the background.

These are the only pages in the whole photobook that the image is on the left side of the pages, and the writing being on the right side of the pages. This image on the left is my favourite as it has a kind of loneliness to it, and I think one object being in the foreground of the image is the symbolism of his whole book, as there is only one object, and this is like this book, as this book is very different from his other works.

How our photobooks will be similar: we both aim to tell an intricate story throughout our photobooks, this is because like Soth, I have a variety of images, and some random images from areas in my home, such as flowers my mum displays and décor that I place in my bedroom. Both of our works will contain many blank pages and a lot of descriptive areas within our books, as I hope that anyone that looks through my book will understand the story I am attempting to tell, as it is very personal and its vital for me that anyone who wanted to could describe the storyline. Furthermore, I would like to add some coloured pages throughout my book, as I think this adds an aesthetical affect to the book, and the background could really like to the images on the pages.

What do you want to explore?

I would like to explore the concept ‘Simple or Complex’ through looking at my family life and history. In order to do this I will be creating photoshoots in areas that I spend a lot of my childhood in (such as the walk from my mums house in St Saviour to my dads house in St Clement) and also takes portraits of some of my family members in other to boost creativity and risk throughout my project. I will be focusing on the fact that my parents are separated and how this has impacted mine and my brother’s life. In addition to take portraits and incorporating landscapes that are familiar to me, I will be including photographs of my and my brother from when we are younger, and this is in an attempt to represent how much we have changed from our childhood.

This exploration of my family in this project will demonstrate that on the outside my relationship with all of my family members seems to be very simple, but are in fact very complex and makes me question how they became to be so complicated in the first place. In my opinion, this will allow me to demonstrate a different kind of photography that I will be able to carry out.

Why does it matter to you?

This project matters a lot to me because it is the most personal concept I have ever created throughout my whole photography course. I would really like to make this project the best I’ve ever done as it is centred around a very specific time in my life when I was very young. Additionally, this subject is something that is very sensitive for me, and I would like this to be reflected in my work as its so special to me.

How do you wish to develop your project?

I would like to take inspiration from the artists Alec South, Matthew Finn and Roberts Adams. With me creating monochromatic landscape images, full face portraits and focusing mostly on my close relationship with my brother. These artists are some of my most inspiring as the pure quality of their work is just amazing. In addition to this, I would like to create a lot of black and white portraits as they will enhance all of my brothers facial features and show how much we look alike, especially through our eyes and nose.

By the end of this project, I would like to have created another photobook, this will allow me to show again that creatively I find creating layout and books very interesting in comparison to other options such as sequences. This will give me a chance to contrast my older family photographs and the new portraits I will take.

When are where do you intend to begin your study?

I wish to begin my study very soon with my first photoshoot, this will likely be of me walking from my mums house to my dads, I will be doing this because this walk will give me an opportunity to take images of a lot of green/ grass landscapes, along with roads and also beach views. I am looking forward to this photoshoot as it will create a wide variety of images and this will mean that there will be some variation within this photoshoot alone.

Photoshoot 1: Will include taking landscape images whilst I walk from my mums to my dads house, I will do this in the early afternoon to try and get the best lighting and only a school camera will be required to do this.

Photoshoot 2: I will take portraits of myself and my brother, I will most likely do this with the backgrounds at my mums house during the morning to try and get the best lighting. Only a camera will be needed for this photoshoot

From October 2022, I began an internship working at the Société Jersiaise photographic archives, a local charity dedicated to preserving Jersey’s photographic history, assisting in digitising their collection of photographs from a variety of eras and photographers.

They had an extensive collection of autochrome images which show Jersey’s contributions to the photographic world.

While working, I was tasked with helping to digitise a collection of colour film slides, documenting the fauna and flora of the island. These images were taken by Roger and Margaret Long, and blur the lines between science and art, with vivid colours and and interesting subject matters. These had an influence on my work throughout this project, inspiring me to branch out into more abstract and colourful imagery.

Robert Adams was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1937. His refined black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West of the past four decades, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space. Although often devoid of human subjects, or sparsely populated, Adams’s photographs capture the physical traces of human life: a garbage-strewn roadside, a clear-cut forest, a half-built house. 

An underlying tension in Adams’s body of work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the camera. Adams’s complex photographs expose the hollowness of the nineteenth-century American doctrine of Manifest Destiny, expressing sombre indignation at the idea (still alive in the twenty-first century) that the West represents an unlimited natural resource for human consumption. 

“I think if you placed me almost anywhere and gave me a camera you could return the next day to find me photographing. It helps me, more than anything I know, to find home.”- Robert Adams

He has received numerous awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1994); the Spectrum International Prize for Photography (1995); and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2006). Major exhibitions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); Yale University Art Gallery (2002); Denver Art Museum (1993); Philadelphia Museum of Art (1989); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1979). Adams lives and works in north-western Oregon.

What I like about his work: I really like the simplicity yet complexness of this work, this is because the photographic skill is reflected onto the landscape, whilst the landscape provides a different point of view, as it provides Adams’ with a chance to express his love for this American space throughout his photos. I think that the lighting and brightness throughout his work highlights the importance of our nature environment and brings attention to the fact that we need to address our environmental issues sooner rather then later on order to have a future.

• 1975: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, January 1975. Curated by William Jenkins. Included work by Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel, Jr.
• 1989: The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mid-career retrospective.
• 2005–2006: Turning Back, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2005; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 2005; Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, 2006^. Center for Creative Photography, Tucson.

Summer Nights, Walking

In the mid-1970s, Robert Adams began recording nocturnal scenes near his former home in Colorado. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, houses, roads, sidewalks and fields seemed transfigured. 25 years after first publishing a sequence of these photos in 1985 as Summer Nights, he revisited his project, amending its title and completely re-editing its contents to create a more disquieting and more accurate reflection of his experience. Hailed as a new classic, Summer Nights, Walking went out of print soon after it was published in 2009. This sensitively enlarged edition, printed with the same exquisite care as the original, makes this revered body of work available to a new audience.

What I like about this work: I like that the contrast within his projects are very consistent, for example in Adams’ ‘Summer Nights, Walking’ project all of the images have a dark exposure, helping to help create this eerie atmosphere and high contrast. Adams’ has done other projects in places such as Arizona, where the exposure of his images are very high, and more attention is drawn to the landscape rather then any other aspects of the images. Additionally, I like that all of his photography focuses on the landscape, as I find this kind of photography very interesting and it can be created in many different locations with different equipment. Throughout my project I would like to attempt to recreate some of Adams’ lightly exposed work, as I think that this makes images more successful.

Image analysis: I think the blurriness and and complexity yet simpleness of this image is very interesting in itself. In my opinions, this image is very complex as all of the leaves and flowers which are focused in the foreground are not very clear, and this means that it takes more attention to figure out what exactly is going on throughout this image, it makes us consider what the intention behind this image is and also what could possibly be in the background? On the other hand, this image could be be interpreted as increasingly simple as the image is mostly just because of flowers and leaves, the background is confusing meaning that more simplicity is present throughout the foreground and I think thats what I like most about this image.

Robert Adams’ created lots of work throughout his lifetime, producing many books which ended up having enormous amounts of recognition. His work has also been recognised as it addresses concerns regarding the environment and our ever-changing climate we life in. This is because he was a part of the ‘New Topographic’ and this helped increase his name in the photographic world.

Katrin Koenning

Photobook – Astres Noirs

I decided to chose this artist as an extra artist reference as I really enjoy the aesthetic that the imagery portrays. I especially like the image of the silhouette emerging from within the water in the lake. I really enjoy how scintillating the whites are within the image as they almost give off quite a euphoric, heavenly sense to the world. I would like to edit one of my photographs that includes people so that I can make an edit similar to the first image by Koenning

Michael Wolf

Photobook – Some More Hong Kong Seating Arrangements

I chose these images from one of Michael Wolf’s photobooks as I really liked the way these were presented. They are laid out in a little photobook with the images all being narrowed down to one simple topic. This one was instance is about all the chairs and seating arrangements that are present within Hong Kong, it’s quite a simple approach but produces some very effective images in the end within the photobook.

Photobook – Tokyo Compression

I really like the overall aesthetic with this photobook. I like the way the keyrings are present through the wet and blurry glass, creating a very simple yet intricate image. I enjoy the overall aesthetic of the photobook, however I don’t think it fits in with the main inspiration for my photography. It may have represented youth within Germany is I was planning to do a photoshoot on youth, but unfortunately they are all based on urban and some rural landscape photography.

Monika Orpik is an artist from Poland, based in Warsaw. Through the medium of photography and experimental processes in the darkroom, she tries to explore the subject of trauma of post-conflict communities and question the influence of art on the process of reconciliation.

Photobook – Stepping Out Into This Almost Empty Road

Stepping Out Into This Almost Empty Road looks at the moment of change when the most idyllic scenario becomes a horror of a political regime. From picking apples in the orchard to tear gas on the street. The book combines photographic material and texts that revolve around the permanent in-between state that is inseparable from the notion of migration. Despite being focused on stories of a specific community, the book makes visible what is universal in the context of transition.

Orpik captures the ripples of change across the region surrounding the border between Poland and Belarus in the wake of Belarus’ 2020 presidential election and subsequent anti-government protests, and the ongoing refugee crisis. She is interested in the pivotal moment when “the most idyllic scenario becomes a horror of a political regime”, “from picking apples in the orchard to tear gas in the street.” 

Orpik choses to work on the basis of invitation and collaboration rather than stepping into something one doesn’t belong to. For her encounter itself was more important than its outcome. The community was portrayed in the way they decided for leaving their traces only in text or photographed objects and landscapes that surround them on a daily basis. The process of ‘Stepping Out Into This Almost Empty Road’ became a reflection on what constitutes neighbourhood, the experience of migration and how the values of diversity can bring people together.

 

Image analysis

With this image here, I decided to chose this image as it displays what I think to be a strong image for the theme of complex as it goes down the route of displaying a vast range of plants such as the ones right in front of the camera and also the ones within the greenhouse. I like the choice of making the image black and white as it displays a much more intense approach to the theme of complex and showcases more texture and patterns within the piece.

I would somewhat argue that it does fall into the category of simple due to the concept of the image just being of a lady in a greenhouse checking her plants. It’s not an overly complicated photography concept so I would say that this image also displays senses of simplicity.

Plan

	Concept	Location	Theme	Settings
Photoshoot 4	Abstract photography, rural landscapes	St Mary – Hamptonne, St ouens – sand dunes at La Braye	Hidden Identity, childhood identity, identity in nature	Manual, Landscape, Macro, Creative Auto

Photoshoot 4

After all of my trouble with the weather in my other shoots, I did my last photoshoot on a sunny evening, during the golden hour. This worked out well for me, and I managed to produce some quality outcomes that were useful going forward. In particular, I managed to capture nature’s interaction with the urban world that disrupts it – for example, the reflections of things such as trees and sand on roads. I focused a lot on roads and beaches in this project – I began to become more and more interested in the different textures on the old, non-resurfaced roads where I was photographing, and their weathered look. I photographed most roads where I was photographing and as my shoots went on I knew what to look for – in this shoot I was looking at uneven and cracked tarmac, markings and reflections.

Selections

Editing

Photoshoot 5

This shoot was unplanned – I was out at this location and had my camera with me, – I decided to take a few shots of the sunset. These images may not necessarily fit with my photo book, but may make some successful final prints in colour, as most of my work is in black and white.

Selections

Editing

I didn’t do much editing for these images – I liked the colours in a lot of them, and only adjusted minor things such as straightening the horizon line or slight cropping.

Final Images for both shoots

Evaluation for both shoots

Overall, both of these shoots were really successful, and as my final photoshoots, I think that my project has generated some really strong final photos. As usual, I found that my photoshoots improved as I went along and in my last formal shoot, I found it easier to find what I was looking for in my images in the landscape. For example strong shadows and contrasts in light and colour, interesting textures such as roads and sand, different light and reflections. Overall, I think these two shoots were successful – however, I do think that in photoshoot 5, I should have changed location for the last part of the shoot. I found my images to be a little repetitive towards the end and this led to my images becoming uninteresting. Therefore, if I was to carry out this shoot again, I would move around the sand dunes where I was shooting more to produce a higher variety of shots, and more different types of images to work with.

Plan

Below are my photoshoot plans for photoshoots 2 and 3. They were quite similar shoots, with photoshoot 2 being quite small – so I decided to compile them together into one blog post.

	Location	Theme	Idea	Settings	Props
Shoot 2	St Brelade: La pulente and la moye	Rural Landscapes, abstract photography	Sense of place, hidden locations, identity	Landscape, manual	Camera
Shoot 3	St Ouen	Rural landscapes, abstract photography	Same as the above shoot.	Landscape, macro	Camera

Photoshoot 2

I struggled with weather conditions in this shoot, due to poor planning on my part – because of this, there was often rain on my lens, creating less and less quality images.

As the shoot progressed, I walked to an area which I had envisioned as a good location to photograph and produced better images. I struggled with overexposure in this photoshoot also because of the bright grey skies – this ruined the quality of quite a few potentially successful images and therefore in my other shoots I decided to plan around the weather to improve my images. Even though the bright grey skies were quite inconvenient for me, the recent rain and bright white tones made some quite nice reflections in the water on the roads, where most of my successful images for this shoot came from.

Selections

These are my selections for my second photoshoot – I didn’t have many for this shoot but still selected a few images that I liked the look of to develop.

Editing

Evaluation

This shoot was probably my least successful in this series of photoshoots. I shot on a grey, rainy day, which meant the light conditions were not the best. I chose a location which I thought would be successful, but it ended up being a little too urban for what I wanted – I was trying to capture the intersection between urban and rural life and its connection to my childhood, but I found that the colours captured mixed with the poor light conditions made a shoot that had few successful outcomes. However, even though this shoot wasn’t the most successful, it provided me with things to work on for my next shoots. In all shoots after this, I tried to shoot in the best lighting possible, which creates a much better environment for capturing the strong directional light, shadow and shapes that are crucial for me in this project. Furthermore, I think that this shoot also had a lack of proper planning – I didn’t choose exactly where I was photographing beforehand, so couldn’t visualise what I was going to photograph – doing this often helps me before a photoshoot so I can think of what I am trying to create with my images.

https://www.dptips-central.com/lighting-conditions.html – a website I used as help for choosing lighting conditions for my next shoots.

Photoshoot 3

This shoot was much more successful than my previous one. The weather was slightly better and was developing this shoot from my first, where I photographed the same place.

In this shoot, with two previous shoots done, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to capture. I focused on looking at lines and shape in the landscape I was capturing, with the aim of producing more abstract images of higher quality. The light was better in this shoot, but I think that I shot a little too late in the day. Some images ended up being underexposed because of the lack of light, which was a shame.

Shooting in the same location was a good idea for this location – I was able to see it from a different perspective on my second shoot and also take similar pictures to my first shoot here, but with higher quality as I was informed by another shoot and new ideas.

Selections

Editing

Evaluation

I found this shoot to be somewhat successful but also in need of improvement. I think it was successful as I was more purposeful in looking for smaller, unnoticeable things in the landscape to capture, and more thoughtful with what I photographed. The weather had improved from the second shoot, but I found that it still heavily impacted the light quality in many of my images. For this reason, a lot of my images didn’t have the depth and shadow that I wanted and appeared a bit flat. However, I think that my location choice for this shoot was great, as I returned to a previous shoot location that was very important to me. I expanded my area of shooting a little as well, in order to generate a new perspective on the location. With the location being a really important place to me in my life, it made me more motivated to create quality images, to represent my childhood home and its surroundings in the way I wanted. This also meant I was more thoughtful about what I was photographing, as personal connections were involved.

Final Images from Both Shoots

Plan

Below is my plan for my first photoshoot – I may end up splitting this photoshoot into two, due to ease of access and different weather etc – my desired locations for this shoot are listed below, both important locations to me and my childhood, having grown up there. I plan to capture abstract type and traditional landscape images.

Genre	Idea	Location	Props	Settings
Landscape, abstract	memory and nature, sense of place	St Ouens bay and St Brelade’s	Camera, Tripod.	Landscape, Creative Auto, Manual.

Contact Sheets

After importing my images from this photoshoot into a folder in Lightroom titled ‘shoot1’ inside my “Simple and Complex” collection set, I began to filter and select my images. I used P and X to filter my images, and highlighted specific types of images in different colours: for example, as seen below, abstract type images in red.

I started this shoot at the top of Mont Matthieu, in St Ouens. This is the hill that I lived at the top of for the first few years of my life. In this part of the shoot, I wanted to capture the lines of the roads, the horizon and the textures in the surrounding landscapes: the fields, roads and sky.

As the shoot continued, I moved down the hill of Mont Matthieu and into St Ouen’s Bay, starting first at the fields at the bottom of the hill and then to a section of the beach that is really important to me – in this section of my shoot, also pictured below, I was focusing on line and shape. I shot in the golden hour on this day, which meant I captured some really lovely shadows and warm tones in my images. After creating some abstract images that I really liked in the first part of my shoot on the hill, I reviewed them and continued to produce similar images on the beach.

I normally struggle with over/underexposure in my shoots at some point, but in this shoot, I didn’t find this to be a massive problem. I tried to think about where the sun was in every shot and location, which avoided unwanted glare in my photographs. Furthermore, I planned this shoot for golden hour, which was about 3/4 pm at this time. This meant the sun was at the perfect level to provide the highest quality light, eliminating overexposure and creating rich warm tones in my images.

Selections

Below are my best images, unedited. In my editing process for this photo shoot, I used a lot of cropping to create more interesting compositions, so the final images look quite different in comparison to their originals.

Editing

In my editing for this shoot, I focused on cropping to create more interesting compositions. Due to the strong leading lines and different shapes in a lot of my images, I used cropping to highlight these more and create more balanced photographs.

In a few of my edits for this photoshoot, I experimented with colour edits after editing in B and W, mainly experimenting with tint and different filters. specifically, I focused on increased/decreased contrast, because I wanted to try different presentations of strong lines and shapes in these images. For example, in the first image I edited, I increased the contrast a lot in order to accentuate the strong lines and differences in black and white tones in either side of the image.

Final Images

These are my best images for this shoot.

Evaluation

I think this shoot was probably my most successful out of my whole project. This is unusual for me, as I normally find my shoots get better as my project progresses, as my ideas become more clear and I get into a better flow of making images. However, I had quite clear ideas of what I wanted to capture before I went out on this shoot and I picked a good time to shoot. I shot in golden hour, with dry conditions on a sunny day, without wind to minimise camera shake. I shot in a familiar location too, which meant I could visualise before I took my images what I wanted them to look like and where specifically I would be shooting. I also think I used slightly different types of editing to my usual style. I don’t normally use a lot of cropping, and often seem to neglect it in my previous projects. However, in this project this has become one of, if not the most important part of my editing, as I have created much more abstract images to my usual style. Cropping has become much more important in these images to create better compositions, and also because different cropping can change the perspective of lines and shapes in an image completely.

Abstract Photography

What is abstract photography?

Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental or conceptual photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene in order to remove its inherent context from the viewer, it may be purposely staged to create a seemingly unreal appearance from real objects, or it may involve the use of color, light, shadow, texture, shape and/or form to convey a feeling, sensation or impression.

History

Some of the earliest images of what may be called abstract photography appeared within the first decade after the invention of the photography. In 1842 John William Draper created images with a spectroscope, which dispersed light rays into a then previously unrecorded visible pattern. The prints he made had no reference to the reality of the visible world that other photographers then recorded, and they demonstrated photography’s unprecedented ability to transform what had previously been invisible into a tangible presence. Draper saw his images as science records rather than art, but their artistic quality is appreciated today for their groundbreaking status and their intrinsic individuality. Another early photographer, Anna Atkins in England, produced a self-published book of photograms made by placing dried algae directly on cyanotype paper. Intended as a scientific study, the stark white on blue images have an ethereal abstract quality due to the negative imaging and lack of natural context for the plants.

The discovery of the X-ray in 1895 and radioactivity in 1896 caused a great public fascination with things that were previously invisible or unseen. In response, photographers began to explore how they could capture what could not been seen by normal human vision. About this same time Swedish author and artist August Strindberg experimented with subjecting saline solutions on photographic plates to heat and cold. The images he produced with these experiments were indefinite renderings of what could not otherwise be seen and were thoroughly abstract in their presentation. Near the turn of the century Louis Darget in France tried to capture images of mental processes by pressing unexposed plates to the foreheads of sitters and urging them to project images from their minds onto the plates. The photographs he produced were blurry and indefinite, yet Darget was convinced that what he called “thought vibrations” were indistinguishable from light rays.

But it wasn’t before Surrealists such as László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray that the genre got its first serious boost. Their experiments within the darkroom established a whole new expressive language, which sometimes didn’t even involve the use of a camera, like in the case of rayograms. Walking the line between surrealism and abstraction were the works of Otto Steinert and Heinz Hajek-Halke, who reinvented the concepts of portraiture, for instance, towards the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, technology got even more involved in the creation of abstract photos, particularly through microscopes that were now evolved enough to provide remarkable imagery. Then came the computers and with the rise of digital photography in the 1990s, the genre has been taken to a whole new level, although many artists remained faithful to the old-school techniques that didn’t include Photoshop or other editing software.

Deconstructing a Photobook

Research a photo book and describe the story it is communicating with reference to subject matter, genre and approach to image-making.

Who is the photographer?

Siegfried Hansen traces visual compositions from graphics and colours and creates „street photography“ the main point of which is not bodies or faces, but graphic connections and formal relations. It shows the aesthetics of coincidence in a public area, which is full of surprises.
His work has been profiled in the books “Street Photography Now“ published by Thames and Hudson and “100 Great Street Photographs” by David Gibson. Siegfried is a member of the renowned street photography collective UN-PUBLIC and a founder member of the German street photography site and German Street Photography Festival.
Siegfried has been a speaker and a juror at many photo festivals around the world. His internationally acclaimed photo book “Hold the Line” published by Kettler Verlag sold out and won several awards.

“Street photography exists as a genre in incredibly many facets and manifestations. It is always about the right time to release the shutter, at a moment that captures and accurately reflects what is fleeting and coincidental. For Siegfried Hansen, street photography is not so much in the nature of reportage and documentation.” What Hansen is interested in is graphic elements, shapes, interwoven lines and structures that, when harmoniously related to one another, yield an abstract image. “Whereas in the photographs of such prominent role models as Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Kertész people play a major role, in the works of this Hamburg photographer faces and people are only suggested and are at best only dimly visible. No more is shown than is needed to create an interesting and balanced combination of people and objects.“

The Flow of the Lines

“The Flow of the Lines” is the second book by renowned street photographer Siegfried Hansen, featuring an introduction by David Gibson. Following the overwhelming success of Hansen’s first book, which has since sold out, this highly anticipated release showcases 147 captivating photos that capture the energy and vibrancy of the urban landscape.  In “The Flow of the Lines”, Hansen’s ability to notice such small, quiet details, loudly celebrates the joy of graphics and absolute precision, which is indeed typical of Hansen’s love of graphic lines in urban settings.

Siegfreid Hansen’s work is world-renowned and has been exhibited in Galleries across the world, such as in Berlin, and Hamburg, where many of his photographs are created, London, Miami, Krakow and Kentucky. He now holds workshops in Germany on the art of street photography and offers personal coaching as well.

Hold the Line

Book in hand: how does it feel? Smell, and sniff the paper.

It feels robust, and clean cut.

Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.

This book is mostly in colour, and relies on colour in order to create some of the highly intriguing compositions found in the book.

Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.

The book is a portrait A4 book, with 56 pages.

Binding, soft/hardcover. image wrap/dust jacket. saddle stitch/swiss binding/ Japanese stab-binding/ leperello

The book is hardcover, with perfect binding.

Cover: linen/ card. graphic/ printed image. embossed/ debossed. letterpress/ silkscreen/hot stamping.

The cover is a printed image, printed on card. The image on the front cover is wrapped from the back to the front, as one image.

Title: literal or poetic/relevant or intriguing.

The title ‘Hold the Line’ can be seen as literal in a sense that the photobook mainly focuses on strong lines and shapes within architecture. However, it can also be seen as metaphorical, as many of the spreads in the book feature lines that are interrupted or ‘held’ in reference to the title. They are interrupted, and continued by another line similar from a different plane of view. For example, in the image to the right below, the red line that intersects the shape at the bottom of the pole and wall in the background is broken apart by the line of the pole of the left – this creates a geometric composition.

The Narrative: what is the story/subject matter? How is it told?

The narrative of this book is the idea of street photography but without faces or humans, but visual and graphic connections in our everyday world, by coincidence. Hansen presents these ideas by using bold colours and shapes, creating spreads where each image / colour fit well together with similar lines and shapes. In this book, Siegfried seeks to prove that all of these compositions are found coincidentally in an everyday landscape – creating a new perspective on street photography, without the inclusion of faces.

Structure and architecture: how the design/ repeating motifs/ or specific features develop a concept or construct a narrative.

Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold-outs/ inserts.

The pages in this photobook are mixed. Some feature two images, that link strongly together, through shape, line or colour. However, some pages are with one image, and the other page a similar colour to a key one in the photograph. (See right below). Images are on a single page mostly, with 3 or 4 double page spreads scattered in the book.

Editing and sequencing: selecting images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.

There is clear juxtaposition in the photobook – each spread features two images, and some with a plain colour and an image on one side. Each spread has some sort of link between each image or colour. For example, In the spread above to the right, the blue lines of the vehicle in the top right link well with the solid blue of the same colour on the left, with the solid down the centre line of the spread creating a strong frame with the three subjects.

Links to my Simple and Complex project

https://www.lensculture.com/siegfried-hansen?modal_type=project&modal_project_id=132705&modal=project-323446 – a link to a preview of my studied book.

This book links quite well to my Simple and Complex project, not only the theme but also my personal project for my exam. Before finding this artist to cover, I was searching for a book / artist who documented the idea of fragmented landscapes or an abstract photographer documenting landscapes. My project and photobook are similar to the work of Siegfried Hansen as I am also focusing on the less traditional ideas of my genre – not taking so many traditional landscapes, but thinking more about the formal elements of the landscapes: light, shape, line and shadow. I also am going to draw inspiration from Hansens’ unique layout with colour blocking, and single images, mixed with a few double page spreads, although not in colour.