Hans Van Der Meer:

Hans Van Der Meer is a Dutch photographer who has created many projects. I am going to focus on his two projects about football ‘Dutch Fields’ and ‘European Fields’ for my personal study. Through out his projects ‘Dutch Fields’ and ‘European Fields’ Van Der Meer explored the relationship between the football and photography. These projects consist of images of various football pitches, which each tell a different story about the game. In an interview about his project ‘Dutch Fields’ Van Der Meer stated that “football and photography can be such a beautiful combination” as you never know hat happened before or after the moment captured which is why the subject of football was so appealing to him. He started of by taking images of by taking photos of the top armature matches before deciding to peruse taking images of lower league games. Van Der Meer tried to find pitches where the background also formed a part of the story and experimented with taking images from different angles such as high up angles from the stands. However, he found himself taking most of his images standing on the ground.

What intrigues me and draws me to Van Der Meer’s images is the way they have a cinematic feel to them. I also like how Van Der Meer allows the viewer to interpret the images how they want, creating their own story on what happened before or after the image was taken.

IMAGE ANALYSIS:

This is a digital image from Hans Van Der Meer’s project ‘European Fields.’ The mis-en-scene presents a football pitch with a scenic background of what looks like a village on an overcast day. It looks as if a corner has just been taken as everyone is crowded in the box. This photo has been taken from a high up angle, possibly from the stands as it looks like you are looking down on the players. The use of light is natural however, there isn’t a key direction in which the light source is coming from as the image was taken on an overcast day. The foreground of the image, what’s going on on the pitch, is in focus whereas the background is slightly out of focus. This suggests that the image was taken with an f-stop of f/5.6 as it has quite a shallow depth of field. The use of colours in the image vary from being dull such as the fields in the background, to quite vibrant. For example the yellow and blue kits and certain parts of the grass stand out more than the colours in the background of the image. The focus of the image is the players who are all trying to get hold of the ball. This image is a snapshot of what happened during the corner however, the viewers don’t know what happens after. It could be said that Hans Van Der Meer has used the rule of thirds and leading lines to draw the viewers to the ball.

I am going to use Van Der Meer’s images as a base inspiration for my photos. I am going to take images of different football pitches in Jersey however, I don’t plan on having people in my photos like Van Der Meer does.

Bernd and Hilla Becher:

Bernd and Hilla Becher were a German couple who took images of the disappearing industrial architecture in Europe and North America. Bernd originally studied painting before typography. Their photography is different to other photographers as they document the history of German architecture such as water towers, factories, coal bunkers and other industrial structures. The way they presented their work as a typology, which is a system used to arranging various things in to groups based on how similar they look. Once they had taken a set of images of a structure, they would group their images together and present them in a grid formation; creating many typologies.

What stands out about Bernd and Hilla Becher’s work is that the sky is separated from the structure in the image. I also note that the sky is plain and overcast which gives it the distinct look that the sky is separated from the subject of the image. To get this affect, they would take their images of the same structure when it was an overcast day or they would have to take a series of images over multiple days to make sure the sky and lighting was correct.

Barbara Kruger:

Barbra Kruger is a conceptual artist and collagist who is most famous for her black and white images which are overlaid with red and white captions displaying the power of identity. Kruger’s work is very powerful in my opinion and links to the theme of femininity and sexism which is a major issue in women’s football. Her work depicts how women can be independent and don’t need to follow the rules created by society.

I plan to edit some of my images in the style of Barbra Kruger’s work as I think I could create a powerful set of images and the caption I can create will link strongly with the theme of my personal study as there have been many challenges playing football as a young girl and still are now.