The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems

How and why are photographers exploring this concept?

Humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant global warming and other changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere. Photographers can use their skills to capture this concept and publish/ display it for people to reflect on. I think its a very impactful genre of photography.

Examples of Anthropocene:

Plastic and waste

Plastic pollution is a global problem. Approximately 7 billion of the 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic produced from 1950-2017 became plastic waste, ending up in landfills or dumped. Poor waste management contributes to climate change and air pollution, and directly affects many ecosystems and species. Landfills, considered the last resort in the waste hierarchy, release methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change.

Habitat Loss

Habitat loss occurs when natural habitats are converted to human uses such as cropland, urban areas, and infrastructure developmentHabitat loss has significant, consistently negative effects on biodiversity. Habitat loss negatively influences biodiversity directly through its impact on species abundance, genetic diversity, species richness, species distribution, and also indirectly.

Ocean Pollution

Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our ocean. 

Some of the debris ends up on our beaches, washed in with the waves and tides. Some debris sinks, some is eaten by marine animals that mistake it for food, and some accumulates in ocean gyres.

Climate Change

Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. Changing climatic conditions and dramatic increases in carbon dioxide will put our ecosystems to the test, threatening supplies of fresh water, clean air, fuel and energy resources, food, medicine and other matters we depend upon not just for our lifestyles but for our survival.

Air Pollution

Air pollution refers to the release of pollutants into the air—pollutants which are detrimental to human health and the planet as a whole. 

Most air pollution comes from energy use and production, burning fossil fuels releases gases and chemicals into the air.

Oil Pollution

-One quart of motor oil can pollute 250,000 gallons of water, and one gallon of gasoline can pollute 750,000 gallons of water! Oil that leaks from our cars onto roads and driveways is washed into storm drains, and then usually flows directly into a lake or stream.

-Depending on the circumstances, oil spills can be very harmful to marine birds, sea turtles and mammals, and also can harm fish and shellfish. Oil destroys the insulating ability of fur-bearing mammals, such as sea otters, and the water-repelling abilities of a bird’s feathers, exposing them to the harsh elements.

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time.

Anthropocene refers to a period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to create a distinct geological change. These changes include;

My mood board shows things like buildings, cars, or other man made objects and how they have impacted earth in perhaps a negative way. As my photoshoots will take place in Jersey, I think taking pictures of buildings in town, or even just cars in crowded car parks will fit the theme of Anthropocene.

Mind-map

Subjects I’m Looking For

Areas like: Cars, The Mine at St.Johns, pollution like plastics and garbage, scattered round jersey, or clumped in specific areas.

I’ll attempt to aim for creating an artistic angle when taking images of plastics.

One idea that is common within everyone’s life, is smoking especially cigarettes, which you will find almost everywhere.

Another Idea could be going to even streets or certain areas where rubbish is just thrown everywhere aimlessly, not in large quantities, but lots of images of rubbish thrown everywhere.

I could use the idea of typology and take lots of individual images of the buds or the cigarettes anyways.

Robert Clayton

Robert Clayton is known for his work in urban photography, particularly in neighbourhoods and estates.

Intentional or not, it appears that he wants to show the dullness and depressing neighbourhoods, full or lacking in crowdedness. Some of these feel as if they were taken in a deserted and abandoned area which gives quite a chilling feeling. Here are some of his photos:

Analysis

You can see here, a wide view angled landscape photo showing some apartment buildings standing tall along with other buildings in the fore and background in a very flat grass area, the buildings indicate human life, but the environment and natural life is scarse, this could be indicating that the way humans live is not supposed to be mixed in with the way animals live.

Another thing is some of the buildings obstructing the sun, casting a long shadow across the flat land. This may be representing the intrusion of man made structures being built in our world, we’re not supposed to live the way we do and we definitely shouldn’t be shunning nature out as we do so.

I can go to places like La Collette, Le Marias, Samarès, Le Quennevais Le Squez and Grouville Arsenal to take pictures like these.

Stephanie Jung

Stephanie Jung is another photographer who is also involved with urban like photography. She takes lots of pictures of mostly buildings and cities in, what seems to be, a sort of burst technique and puts them together to create a distorted effect. I think these photos are very interesting as I’m not sure what the meaning is behind them.

Here are some samples:

Analysis

Jung’s work captures the everyday life in the city. She takes these photos at the right time of day to capture different moods. This one for instance has a very gloomy look, especially with the dark green appearance. It creates a sort of sad and lonely environment. And it’s distorted to show perhaps everything that is going on at the same time the photo was took, there is lots of different activity the people are doing in this city whether that be working, talking, eating or anything else that could be potentially happening. Because of this, I think these photos overall are made to show us that were are overpopulating the planet, it will continue to happen and increase and we can’t do anything about it. As of now, there are just over 8 Billion people on planet earth. Which will not mean any good for the environment as now there are more people taking up more space and causing more pollution etc. Humans only make the world worse.

Some places I have in mind to take pictures at are The Waterfront, Fort Regent, Car Parks, The Big Chimney, Harbours and High Rises.

I will try other things during my photoshoot however, like trash washed up on the beach, litter scattered around places, buildings and places that are overgrown with leaves, vines, trees etc.

Here are some extra ideas:

What is it?

Anthropocene is how the world has been altered through human activity.

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change. Wikipedia

The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.

Anthropocene could be used to map out social landscape and collect evidence of spatial and social engagements. Photography is important in Anthropocene Photographs and photography act as vital ciphers and prisms for a wide range of anthropological concerns, and serve as increasingly complex forms of evidence, premised not on content alone.

How is jersey affected by Anthropocene?

The economy of Jersey is a highly developed social market economy. It is largely driven by international financial services and legal services, which accounted for 39.5% of total GVA in 2019, a 4% increase on 2018.Jersey is considered to be an offshore financial centre. Jersey has the preconditions to be a microstate, but it is a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK. It is considered to be a corporate tax haven by many organisations.

Due to Jersey’s growing financial centre we now have a rise in corporate office buildings being built, which is industrializing the town centre. This could be seen as beneficial as it is opening Jersey up to better resources. However, the huge modern buildings are taking the beauty away from the original architecture found all around the island and modernizing it.

Where?

I would like to take my photoshoot in town in busy industrialized areas.

What?

I am going to focus on creating light trails from car lights with big buildings in the background.

When?

I am going to take this photoshoot during rush hour in the evening.

What Is Anthropocene?

Anthropocene is an epoch about the most recent state Planet Earth is in and how humans have altered it and are impacting the planet.

I am tasked with taking several photoshoots involving this topic for my mock exam. Here are some examples of photos and locations I can use:

Locations:

La Collette, St. Ouen, St. Helier, Harbours, Ocean, Airport.

Subjects:

Bins, Cars, Rubbish, Smoke, Pollution, Plastic in sea, Any sign of Man intercepting with nature.

Mood Board:

The Great Wave combines Le Gray’s technical skill with grandness. At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print.

The ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations, merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs are a conflation, ‘real’ yet virtual and imaginary. The conflation aims to transform a specific place into a space of greater universality.

Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

Both images show different types of landscapes, one being very simplistic and the other being quite abstract however they both show a seascape

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

They both are seascapes.

What differences do you notice?

Dafna Talmor‘s image is very abstract, with images of different seascapes placed together and making a montage idea whereas, even if, Le Grey’s image is made up of two different images, it’s still a lot less abstract that Talmor’s image

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Ominous, Cold, Dark. Stormy

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

Gustav Le Grey’s as the image is more inviting and an actual structure is seen.

who is he:

Barry Rosenthal is a fine art photographer who collects rubbish from beaches and make a new purpose for it. He studied at the Dayton art institute in Ohio focusing on photography, as well as going to different workshops in New York. He take then rubbish back to his studio and lays it out on black card and takes images of it as seen below. Each of his image have a specific theme, colour, shape, or its intended use. Rosenthal use his work as a message to people about our ecosystem becoming damaged and polluted etc. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans and now we are adding around nine million tones each year. This is his main focus of his work, telling people about what he has discovered and what he is doing in order to try and help. Many of the pieces of plastic Barry uses have either lost their original shape, colour etc, showing who they have been on a journey before he finds them and give them a new purpose. He likes his images to have a narrative behind them in the hope that he will catch viewers attention while creating some unique images.

some of his work:

The Anthropocene is a new, modern day Epoch, where the effects of human activity have impacted the natural world – a result of greenhouse gases being emitted by machines and industrial practices.

The Anthropocene project is a large-scale body of work from various artists, photographers, and scientists to display the true impact of human waste on our planet – and the need to change for a better future on Earth.

WHAT IS ANTHROPOCENE?

Anthropocene is relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ANTHROPOCENE?

The Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.

MOODBOARD:

THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT:

The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth.

Another collaboration from Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky, and Jennifer Baichwal, The Anthropocene Project is a multimedia exploration of the complex and indelible human signature on the Earth.

This project is a way for photographers to emphasize the damage man-kind is doing and how it is negatively affecting the Earth.