My plan for doing the typology photoshoot would most obviously be taking pictures of specific things and areas round jersey. But this will include things like Boats at harbours. There isn’t anything meaningful behind it besides the aesthetic behind them if I edited them. For example: (Except it will include individual boats)

Furthermore, on the topic of harbours I’d like to take images of piers. There is a meaning behind this one, being that as a kid, lets say round 12-15, especially during summer, I would go pier jumping a lot, as a way of feeling alive from the fall and the instant shock of the water, even learning tricks to spice it up a little bit.

Harbours even have a lot of history behind them, from how old they are and through what they have been through, thinking about storms etc.

Bernd and Hilla Becher were two German photographers born in the early 1930s. They are renowned for their straightforward monochrome photos of industrial buildings which they did for almost 50 years! These photographs were a way of remembering as many of these buildings have been knocked down since their photographing.

Bernd studied painting and lithography at the Staatliche Kunst Akademie from 1953 to 1956. He then proceeded to study typography from 1957 to 1961. Bernd was very interested in functional buildings of industry and began photographing those which he had seen around his hometown. Hilla studied photography in Potsdam. Briefly, she also worked as and aerial photographer in Hamburg. Hilla moved to Düsseldorf in 1959 where she met Bernd. They began collaborating on their photos and married in 1961.

Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed industrial structures in Germany. Especially in the Ruhr. They also took photos all through Europe and North America.

Together the Bechers established a photography department in 1976 the school which Bernd attended (Staatliche Kunstakademie) and Bernd became its first professor. Their styles were so distinctive and their careers so successful that they came to be known as the Düsseldorf School of Photography.

The Bechers won awards for their photography such as the Hasselblad Award in 2004 and the Erasmus Prize in 2002.

Personally, I really like Bernd and Hilla Bechers work. I really think it is so interesting and I really love the style of photography how they found beauty in the strangest things as industrial buildings. and I would really like to use ideas from their work with mine on photoshoots.

The term typologies was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher became documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’.

Typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects, environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject

who is Bernd and Hilla?

Bernhard “Bernd” Becher (20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007) and Hilla Becher (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015) were German conceptual artists and photographer working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings, architecture, structures including water towers, coal bunkers, gas towers and factories around Europe and North America and are well known for putting their images in grids, this was to highlight the formal similarities of each structure. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award. They have been collaborating together as a duo since 1959 after meeting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1957.

The common themes they used was overlooked beauty and the relationship between form and function. Both subjects addressed the effect of industry on economy and the environment.

what they photographed:

• industrial buildings
• architecture
• structures
• water towers
• coal bunkers
• gas towers
• factories

more examples of typology

As a class, we went on a photography walk from Havre des Pas to La Collette – photographing the collaboration of the town and the seaside in the style of the new topographics. We used a shutter speed of 1/125 and an automatic ISO on the Tv setting to achieve a darker, less exposed look on the final images we took.

With each image, I tried to implement some form of natural formation with something visible manmade, to create a contrast between humans and nature, such as trees near a construction site, the beach and the pier itself, etc.

I also tried to feature some people in my images to give them a little more life – asking classmates to stand somewhere, taking candid photos of them, etc.

I then sorted through each photograph using the pick tool, rejecting images that were blurred, too close to someone, or ones that just didn’t have a very functional composition – too dark, too overexposed, etc.

After selecting the images I found the most interesting, I was left with 53 compositions that I could mess around with.

I then edited the photos that I liked the most and was left with these as the results – I mostly focused on the temperature of them, bringing out the blue and yellow hues.

My favourite images were these six, each having a good balance of colour range, texture, and lighting.

Rural landscape photography takes more focus on natural land, affected by humans, but in the less densely-populated areas, such as farmland or the countryside. Photographers such as Fay Godwin created pieces that capture a small piece of the sublime with humanity’s small additions to the natural landscape in these areas, like farmland, fenced-off pastures and meadows.

This works well with the concept of the new topographics, as it combines elements of nature with man-made structures – while still showing humanity’s impact on the natural world.

I could try to take a similar photoshoot, travelling to the more rural areas of the island, and taking photographs of farmland and fields to create a dramatic composition.

What is Typology:

Typology is a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency that is mostly based on the environment and subjects It was created by Bernd and Hilla Becher in Germany, when they started taking photos of ruined buildings or those that had been abandoned.

Examples of Typology:

As you can see, they appear to have a deadpan style, with the camera facing the subject head-on in black and white. With nothing else in the frame, it’s just the building.

Bernd and Hilla Becher:

Bernd and Hilla Becher were a couple who formed a duo in photography. They were the ones who started Typology:

Photographers like Ed Ruscha, Thomas Ruff and Gillian Wearing were some of these photographers who went out and took photos similar to the Bechers’ work.

Ed Ruscha:

“Every Building on the Sunset Strip”

Ed Ruscha was famous for his paintings and prints but was also well known for his work on Typology in photography. He wanted to capture the same kind of images that the Bechers did. He is well known for his album named “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” which he made in Hollywood.

This 25ft folded album contained photographic views he took in the 1-and-a-half-mile road stretch of sunset. Every two pages would capture both sides of the road to create a panographic view.

“Twenty-six Gasoline Stations”

Ed Ruscha made his first book in 1963 and called it “Twenty-six Gasoline Stations”, it contained 26 pictures of gas stations. This is the book:

They fit the deadpan style with no particularly interesting features that the Berchers originally did. His motive was to intentionally make the photos boring to show people that the area had exactly that level of excitement in the actual place.

Robert Adams is a new topographic photographer he was born on the 1 January 1885 and died in November 13 1967 he was a Scottish photographer and a has wrote 38 books and won  two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Hasselblad Award.

what is new topographic is basically instead of taking pictures of wild life photographers like Robert Adams, they would take pictures of buildings and man made objects

Typology is a system of putting things into groups according to how they are similar. A typology in photography, refers to one or more photographs that have a high level of consistency. This can be in the form of subjects, environments, etc.

Bernd and Hilla Becher are known best for their work with typologies. These consisted of black and white photographs of an industrial structure.

Case study: Bernd and Hilla Becher

The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher travelled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures, such as the winding towers that haul coal and iron ore to the surface and the blast furnaces that transform the ore into metal.

A lot of work goes into composing these collections of photographs. It would be very time consuming to find these similar/same structures. However, I imagine it is also quite time consuming to crop and adjust the images in order to create the sense of uniformity and for them to appear identical in order to produce the typology.

By choosing to make the photographs black and white, it maintains the focus on the subject. If there were external factors, (i.e. background settings, contrasting colours, different times of day) then that would make the photos appear different and eliminate the sense of uniformity within the typology.