Environmental Portraits

I mostly enjoyed creating the images of Environmental Portraits whilst learning photography because of the techniques that I had to use in order to create good images. Environmental portraits are images of someone in their environment, specifically a portrait of them with the context of what they are doing or where they work behind them. You can learn from doing a project like this because of how you have to frame your image for a better effective image, which will allow you to convey more of the environment’s context. The backgrounds used in environmental portraits are more to show the symbol of someone’s working environment, for example:

A mechanic in his environment of a workshop having a break which can show a lot about a person. Their lifestyle is put on display and depending on what is in the image and what the persons expressions are, it could symbolise a stressful lifestyle/environment or any context the image is trying to show.

A couple images iv taken in this area I enjoyed creating because what is nice about this subject area is that it is all situational in where and when you take the image, you could be anywhere and be in a perfect position to take an environmental image for example one of my images:

Which I had taken with no intention to even use but turned out to be one of my best images in this area. It relates to nostalgia to me because of the times and situation the image was taken at and where the setting is, which to me was a time that I remember in a positive, enjoyable way.

Urban Photography

Urban photography can be created in different ways in photography, sometimes landscapes, close up any many other different ways, its very fluid to how you create your urban images.

Urban images are created in areas like cities or a village or places where there is a compacted and commercial area where people live or come visit. This could be for example New York, London, Jersey in town etc. Unlike Environmental portrait images which are mostly fond of the use of black and white images, Urban images like to be taken with a lot of vibrant colours with unique settings, and uses a lot of different shapes and lighting.

Urban photography is in its best element when there is a lot of movement going on and a people with a quick paste of life because it captures a scene and the context of what goes on in people lives living in urban areas in the cities. Whilst editing these images it is best when using a lot of contrast and vibrancy in the images. This area of photography is closely resembled to street photography because of its looks and methods of how it is made, it creates its own aesthetic. Although some of the images are created to look good and have a good feeling to them, some of the images in Urban photography are created to symbolise something, for example a run down abandoned building that sits in the area that no one uses but people know it is there.

It is close to nostalgia because of the feel that the images create which is very vibrant and the aesthetic makes you think about your “childhood” as a kid or even a teenager, which is how you might of been, running in the streets finding things to do and having fun with the resources of the urban area you live in.

Occupied.mp4

As a whole, I would say that I’ve learned a lot about photography on this course so far, improving on my technical skills such as editing images and creating compositions, and my more practical skills, for example, using camera settings to my advantage and using lighting to establish tone and mood.

A lot of themes have been covered on this course, but the two that stick out to me the most as powerful and inspiring would have to be identity and nostalgia, as I feel they both link together, but they also provide plenty of personal experiences that make me who I am that I can reflect on and use in my work.

I’ve found myself more interested in the medium of film as a means of expressing my work, but I still prefer the idea of photography and feel that my skills in this area are more advanced and varied.

Conceptual and documentary photography are the two approaches I’ve found to be the most intriguing as I believe there’s a lot more that I can do and explore with them, as opposed to tableaux photography, a genre that doesn’t really appeal to me all too much.

My favourite artists that I’ve looked at/studied are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alec Soth, and Ansel Adams.

I feel that Cartier-Bresson’s style had an incredibly large impact on my work, as it has completely changed my approach to street photography and improved how I put together a composition in the frame. His influence has also provided me with a lot of confidence toward shooting at ‘the decisive moment’ to capture an interesting and lively piece. This example above

Alec Soth has inspired my work in the sense that I try to create compositions that focus on the person as a whole, so that their personality and aspirations are evident within my presentation of them, through their body language and even the use of props. His work has definitely made me more thoughtful about the message and implications of my own work.

Ansel Adams was a very powerful artist to study when it came to landscape photography. It taught me different methods of adding drama and romanticism to my photographs, which gave them a stronger overall composition to make them stand out better.

‘Paris Photo is the largest international art fair dedicated to the photographic medium and is held each November in the heart of Paris. Since 1997, the Fair’s mission is to promote and nurture photographic creation and the galleries, publishers and artists at its source.

Paris Photo brings together up to 200 exhibitors from across the world, offering collectors and enthusiasts the most diverse and qualitative presentation of photography-driven projects today. Leading galleries showcase historical and contemporary artworks from modern masters to young talents. Specialized publishers and art book dealers present unique and rare editions, as well as book launches and signature sessions with many of today’s most renowned artists.

Paris Photo also provides visitors with first-hand insights and access to the art world. Programming includes curated exhibitions with renowned public and private institutions, awards, conversation cycles with curators, artists, collectors, and critics, and special events exploring the unique history of the medium; varying visions, practices and emerging trends. In addition, the Fair’s “In Paris during Paris Photo” programme reunites a dense network of cultural institutions throughout Paris comprising some of the most historically rich photographic collections in the world.’

I enjoyed looking at the work on display at Paris Photo, but the sheer range was honestly rather overwhelming. I found a few examples of work that I might wish to draw inspiration from for my personal study.

The above image is of a collection of Polaroid images of a TV screen taken by Tom Wilkins over 4 years (from 1978-1982) of various actresses, with individual captions. Sébastien Girard later buys this collection in an auction of Tom’s belongings following his disappearance and publishes it in a book in 2017. Girard describes this book on his website:

‘Tom is American.  He lives by himself. TV keeps him busy.  In 1978, he buys a polaroid camera and spends 4 years photographing the women who inhabit his TV screen.

Moreover, he carefully writes on each print a caption and the date. Over 4 years, Tom assembles an extraordinary diary, a silver harem of a thousand annotated polaroids arranged in albums, all titled My Tv girls.
Following the disappearance of its author, this lot was put up for sale on auctions together with other belongings.

Simultaneously interested by this story of appropriation and fascinated by Tom’s visual diary, I decide to buy this archive.
I then study them and recreate their incantatory dimension in a book, ten years later.’

This work is that of Horacio Coppola’s, an Argentine photographer of the cafes, side streets and neon-lit boulevards of Buenos Aires in the 1930s. He introduced avant-garde photography to Argentina. I particularly enjoyed the way in which he portrayed city nightlife and I find his images definitely inspire me to create similar ones to respond to the brief of nostalgia.

The above images are taken by Joel Meyerowitz, an American street, portrait, and landscape photographer. I like these because they also have a strong relation to the theme of nostalgia, and I think they have a particular style to them.

I like the work of Larry Sultan also, the above image was the one displayed at the exhibition and I really like the way he has used the light to perfectly capture the essence of the evening air. I think this also relates to the theme of nostalgia because all of his images have this kind of faded and forgotten feeling to them. This series, Pictures from Home, is significant as it is Sultan’s memories of his parents from when he was a child. He uses the typical architecture of the American suburb to create imagery that can be relatable to many viewers.

I didn’t get to take as many images as I would have liked, however I think I did manage to get a few strong ones.

Overall, In think the film turned out better than we thought. Through out the process of making the film we though of more ideas that would improve our film. The main focus of out film was the letter from World War Two, I think we presented the letter well as it is displayed across the images and we had someone read it out,

The process of making the film was quite long as we had to learn how to use new soft wear such as Adobe Audition and Adobe Premier Pro. I don’t think making a film would be my first choice to present my personal study as it was such a long process.

Link to film:

Dearest Patricia

The museum also happened to be holding an exhibition of the work of Victor Burgin, which I felt was my favourite showing I had seen. Victor Burgin is a conceptual artist and photographer whose work is composed of both images and words. I enjoyed the experience that his performative pieces represent, and I felt that the story told in Gradiva (1982) was truly captivating and cinematic.

His US77 series was also extremely interesting to me because it explores ‘the construction of sexual difference in representations, of patriarchal power relations and the “masculine” identity that supports them’. They were originally exhibited under the title ‘Tales from Freud’, which indicates their topics of discussion.

How do archives function as repositories of knowledge?

Archives function like a human brain through holding information, and us selecting where the information goes, but can only hold things that have happened in the past and what is currently occurring in the present moment. They hold information through peoples activities or organisations which they have done, they are mainly seen as records of something, for example, an image, or a poem, even letters of important or even non-important information. archives are more the gran scheme of things which hold the information, they are not the information themselves, they are designed to only hold the information and can be in large quantities. Archives are digital, and physical, most commonly they are physical because in the past there wasn’t anything “digital” and they can be better looked after. Société Jersiaise are a facility which do all this but specifically about Jersey and its historical context. They where founded during 1873 by 3 islanders who where interested on the antiques and languages the island held, which grew the facilities a lot and allowed for information to be held much better. They even have people that have been taking images over the years of the island every day to show people for the future what society looks like currently and how people acted in every day life, even what it looked like. We learn a lot from doing things like this, as it shows a timeline of how society has grown or when it has crashed. To better understand it, archives are things like apps which you may log into or just use, even what you watch, as these things hold information about you and track what you do which is sort of like an archive, but also like building blocks, as the more you use the apps the more things it knows about you and the more it stores about you like an archive. And now knowledge is power.

Over year twelve and thirteen I have covered many topics such as Nostalgia, Anthropocene, Home, Feminity/ Masculinity/ Identity and more. From these shoots I am going to revisit my favourite ones to help direct me towards a final idea for my personal study. I found some of these shoots more powerful than other ones, such as feminity, rural landscape photography, and long exposure portraits. I enjoyed the other shoots, but these three were my favourite, with my best outcomes. I also enjoyed my year twelve summer task ‘My Jersey’.

Rural Landscape

These were my best outcomes from this project:

My favourite part of this project was the pressure to capture light and shadows in the limited time given by nature, due to the fact the light was disappearing and changing. I might use some rural landscape photography in my personal study photoshoot to give a sense of surrounding in my personal life.

Feminity

This shoot wasn’t my strongest shoot, however I really like focusing on feminity as a subject because it is a big issue today that needs to be seen. Using photography to emphasise this issue is a really creative technique and I enjoyed the process of trying to show the power of females through Francesca Woodman’s inspiration.

Francesca’s Work

My Final Outcomes

I might consider feminity as a theme for my personal study, however if I was going to choose it I would combine it with my personal life and how feminity is shown through my past, and growing up as a female in a nostalgic sense.

Long Exposure Portraits

I experimented with Rembrandt and butterfly lighting in year twelve, and then moved onto long exposure photos with different colour gels for lights. These outcomes are also some of my favourite photos from the year. I really enjoyed the process of adjusting the shutter and achieving a balanced aperture and ISO to get the movement in the photo. These are some of the images:

I don’t think I would use this in my personal study, however going back and reviewing them gives me the opportunity to consider it.

Overall

Looking back on my old shoots and techniques I learnt, I revisited my ‘Nostalgia’ blog post. I find the positive mood given from nostalgia interesting and I like the idea of using it in my personal study.

A section of my blog post states ‘The personalities, possibilities, and events of the past are seen as a longing when associated with nostalgia, specifically the idea of “good old days”. People typically view the future more negatively , in contrast to the past as a more favourable thought. This is called diclinism when applied to one’s beliefs about society/ institution. It’s been expressed as “a trick of the mind” and as emotional approach to find comfort when the present day is dull.‘ I think revisiting the past with archived images from my childhood, then juxtaposing them with present day images could create a good piece. I might also photograph certain objects from my past that create nostalgia, and places that hold memories.

Nostalgia

During our trip to Paris I took many different types of images including the surrounding architecture/buildings as well as people/city life and street art etc.

edited images:

Exhibitions:

We spent hours looking around galleries and photography exhibitions looking at work from a range of different photographers and their various different styles. Here are some of the images that i felt most inspired by: