I chose this as one of my favourites because I like the mixture of the colours used and how there is a person in the view who seems mysterious.
I like this one because of the intense lighting but also the composition and how it wonders off to the left whilst showing the urban buildings.
This one was nice to take because to get to this place it look some climbing and angles, and at the end the image came out well, with the street lights and the car park building it reminds me of some of Rut Blees’ work.
This one in my opinion looks cool because of the water droplet effect it has on the camera, but where it isn’t so intense you cannot see anything but it is to a point in which you can make up what the image is, and creates a nice aesthetic.
I like this ominous look of the image, and how it seems like there is something wrong or something will appear.
This one I chose to be my favourite because of the architecture and angles, but the lighting works in its favour creating something very nice.
For the beginning of my book I wanted to use a skyline of the main area of what I was going to be mainly taking pictures in, but that it linked into the subject of Urban nightlife.
The title “Memento Mori” Means “remember you must die”, which is a very philosophical phrase that has been used a lot and I think suits the context of my images, as it creates a mindset for the audience of mystery and loneliness, but contrasts it with some of my warm images.
for the first phew pages i’ve started off with some almost scary images, which hold a lot of confusion in them where you might have a think of what it is or even where it goes. But then I wanted it to transition into a context of people in it who you might draw your attention to and also think about who they are.
I wanted to be bold when creating the layout for my images because of how warm they are and how if they where small it would be hard to recognise them. And I’ve also wanted to create a layout which follows your eyes for example the first images here work well because of the panorama effect.
these last images I wanted to have a personal mixture of good and less good images as a way of mixing up the emotion of the person looking at the images, whilst keeping the consistency of an ominous look. But overall I think the layout works well with these images and how I’ve kept the cold images with each other and warm with each other which is more pleasant to look at, whilst having an aim of putting the viewer through confusion but also having them appreciate the images.
Rut Blees Luxemburg’s work has a close relationship to the sublime and romanticism, with her aesthetic and aim being towards this genre and style behind the context of the images.
The sublime is a view on the world in which there is an appreciation for beauty and imagination within nature especially, and falls under the category of romanticism. Another view on it is a heightened awareness in the world. It was Edmund Burk who was a key ingredient in the movement of the subject of the sublime, as he wrote a philosophical book into the ideas of beauty and “the sublime”. His ideas and world view was very emotional and he believed in a lot of thinking from the heart as people would say, as there was not much logic involved, “For Burke, it is the passions (as represented in our imagination), not reason, which determines how and what we see, hear and feel in the world”.
A lot of this idea of the Sublime goes towards the senses on the body and mind, and how Burke believed that the feelings of terror and sadness (negative emotions) are much greater than the ones that will be pleasurable, and in that case these negative emotions are more recognised in a way where you learn and strive from. But he continues to talk about through living a life of happiness, isn’t possible without the possibility in it ending in terror.
Rut Blees Luxemburg Link to the sublime:
Susanne Kippenberger talks about Blees’ work by saying, “Rut Blees Luxemburg finds beauty in the most mundane corners of the urban landscape”. which has a close relationship to the idea of the sublime and finding beauty in areas which seem unsalvageable, and places which you would never look at in the way you might when looking at her images.
Other sources say in an interview that Blees doesn’t use editing software, rather just a sheet of paper with her prints on and a window with light, which shows how less artificial her work is, without the need of software she can create truly amazing pictures by also using exposures of up to 10 minutes. Where she claims she stumbles across these areas rather than looking for them, and works on one area for an image for hours, until she is happy with the results.
My View/Analysis:
I like Blees’ work because of her simplicity with the way she chooses what to image, and how the simplest and most unpleasant areas can become eye catching images through her skills. Furthermore, I like the use of shapes along with lines in her images and how depth is very visible within her images, for example in this image is is simple with a lot of lines and clear subject in the middle of the composition, whilst the background is of a landscape skyline. But also images like this:
which have a lot more shapes but specific subjects to think about within the subject, like the chair and table within the main subject of the container. The images she creates, show a sense of mystery and confusion, which is appealing non the less, but also the lighting used is very aggressive and reflective because of the wetness on the floor, which creates more of a contrasted image between light and dark. In my opinion Blees’ work is a lot harder than most photographers because although having a large city to be able to image, she makes it harder by taking these images during the night, as there is less light, and less things happening during the night, which you might not be used to in comparison to the day. Not only that but her use of up to 10 minute exposures show commitment to her images, as she spends a lot of time capturing only a phew images she chooses from at the end of her photoshoots.
During my last photo shoot I started to understand how to adapt my camera to the context of where I was and what I was taking a picture of. By using higher ‘F’ with 100 ISO and longer exposures it created a less grainy image with better intensity of lighting. What I like about these images is that it suits well with what I’m aiming for with wet, and slippery type of images.
this was one of my most interesting photoshoots that occurred, where I decided to captured some subjects in my photo that are apart of the urban nightlife of jersey, because of how much of a routine it is for most people to go out on Friday and Saturday nights to drink and have fun. I decided this image with a subject in because it suited the mysterious aim I was looking for in the images. However the other images I chose here where from where I might have explored as a kid, which ended up becoming some good images. These where my best out of this photo shoot because the rest had a lack of mysterious aesthetic I wanted and was rather characters partying. This photoshoot I also started to understand using brighter colours in specific subjects which worked very well.
throughout the weeks and couple months i’ve taken over 400 images of the urban nightlife of jersey, which is very docile in some areas and brightly coloured in others. But these where my top 27 that I want to use for my photo book. I like the aesthetic of a my mysterious, wet, lonely areas, but with lots of colour and they have a nice feel to them. It closely relates to the artist I have been studying (Rut Blees Luxemburg) and how she creates her images and what her style is but with my own twist and completely different contexts:
A majority of these images where me going around on my motorbike finding areas that appealed to me with either lots of light or which had ominous lighting.
Opening Quote: “photographs really are experience capture, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its
Statement of intent:
I’m exploring an area of street/urban night photography around the streets of jersey, and the villages occupying the island. I’m capturing images of these area’s at night with illuminate lighting to create an aesthetic image with dim lighting and areas with some brighter lighting and experiment with mixing and layering the images using photoshop and lightroom, whilst capturing a lot of people in the images and characters. Its more nostalgic than important to me because from the age of 11-15 I was always out on my bike with friends doing anything we could find that was fun or find interesting, for example trying new things like skating, finding abandoned areas around jersey because there isn’t much else you can do in jersey. But what connects this nostalgia to a night theme is that most of this would happen during winter which had shorter afternoons, and a majority of my fond memories are with fuzzy lamp lighting during the dark, and I think a lot of people can see the areas I’m going to photograph as nostalgic because most people would be out in these areas as a kid, finding what to do or having fun. And I want to represent that in a clearer way with higher quality but also contrast it with some images with docile areas to show the balance jersey has between the packed areas and more docile areas. I’m going to be mainly going to areas which have a good amount of lighting during the night but also areas which have people in to capture them in a moment or in motion. I’m going to present these images in a photobook as I like the layout it has. I’m going to have more of a wider perspective of my images through framing areas from a far away but not too close, and I’m going to be looking for a lot of shapes of street lights, apartment areas, people who present an aesthetic. These images will include a lot of architecture and well light, street areas during the night, with natural and artificial lighting. I don’t want to use too much forced lighting or and over use of lighting otherwise this wouldn’t look or feel like the aesthetic I’m aiming for.
Essay Question: What does Rut Blees Luxemburg reveal in her work?
“My photographs show something which is abandoned yet somehow invisible”. Rut Blees Luxemburg
Introduction draft:
Night photography requires a lot more patients and placing of your camera. During the day there are infinite things to capture at every moment, but during the night everything slows down and areas you’ve never paid attention to start to appear under artificial lighting, allowing for more specific angles and shadows to appear, which form a more unique image than if it were under natural lighting. This is what Rut Blees Luxemburg explores in her work, in particularly the city of London where she has lived and made work throughout most of her career. In her long exposure, which in some cases last up to 10 minutes, she creates an aesthetic and skilfully made images. Furthermore, the feeling of a urban night photograph is interesting because the colours being used are very warm and outstanding. As she Blees Says, “I am not thinking about individual stories, but around the space as a site of ideas and immersion”, her work is created through what she comes across, and views her work space as a template for ideas which will come to her. she also brings her friend with her in case anything where to happen, but she explains that there is a beauty in night photography and the action of it allows for a different type of life to come out which you wouldn’t normally see during the day. In her book “my suicides” they reference in the beginning paragraph that, “they appear to identify that moment of communion where the search for subject if over.”, which refers to Blees’ work as revealing through the subject of the city, and how no other character or interference is made from the outside, rather a subject of the city. I agree with this statement because of how Blees does not include contextual images of characters like people in her images, and how she seems not to look for specific things to photograph, rather the things that she sees that is apart of the environment around her.
Luxemburg’s work relates closely to “the Sublime” in the aesthetic and how she perceives her world whilst capturing her images, where she connects to nature in a way where she is the observer of what happens during the night in London, this is supported by an interview made on her by Francis Marshall, where Blees states, “My second attempt to photograph London was in the early 2000s, and my mood had changed to ‘Liebeslied’”, which also initially attracted her to abandoned, broken areas of London . The context of the sublime is a philosophical view on the world in which there is a heightened awareness from the perspective of someone’s world view. This was introduced by Edmund Burk who overviewed the ideas of beauty, awareness, nature, and time in a book called ‘A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas on the sublime and beautiful”, which was a big movement into the idea of romanticism. Blees’ work connect to this idea of mystery, abandonment, even sadness, where behind all of that is an outstanding image, she even describes in an interview, her images as “one that’s alluring, open, glowing even… yet also ambiguously wet, slippery and dark.” . Which sends you through an array of negative yet intense emotion, but it also allows you to depict it into the context of how you view the image and see a different perspective on her images to reveal something hidden in what she creates.
Blees’ work aims towards the connection between beauty behind the abandonment and run down of areas. Exploring the nights of London, it allows Blees to see the empty carnage of what was left throughout the day, and even throughout the centuries, she captures images of broken houses, cracked concrete floors, roads which fill with puddles, and beat down infrastructure, she can show a beauty behind it using angles and her camera, her work shows the process of having a second look. Susanne Kippenberger even says in her review of Blees, “Rut Blees Luxemburg finds beauty in the most mundane corners of the urban landscape”, showing Blees’ skill and relationship she has with this idea of “the Sublime”. Furthermore, Her images create a nostalgic feel to them whilst also presenting a bit of mystery in a way that captures a person attention and for them to think about the image whilst appreciating it. This theme even progresses in other artists work, for example, Troy Piava, who expresses a lot of connection between abandoned areas within nature during the night, where he says “I love the surreal feeling of wondering through an abandoned subdivision, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. Your sense become heightened, and you feel the weight of time”. This type of work from a lot of photographers who explore this subject, find a lot of their work expressing a part of romanticism through the context of where they create their images and how they perceive image making.
Luxemburg’s My Suicides and other work relating to night urban photography uses a lot of contrast between lighting and uses a lot of warm colours to set the scene for the image, which create an affect of expressing emotion and meaning, closely linking to Romanticism which as a whole topic aims towards nature, intensely expressed emotion and connection, which can all become revealed behind an image and its context. This is a lot of what Blees does within her image making during the night which creates personal inspiration because of the quality of the images but also the meaningful context behind the creation of the image, and that it can be presented through interpretation, because many images are a specifically set scene. Whilst at the same time it can relate to others in a comforting way because of the crowded and rundown areas we interact with every day without taking notice because of its absence of beauty. For example in her book “My Suicides” it says, “The City becomes a hall of mirrors to reflext the duplicity or nobility of human nature”, which is relating to how the city mirrors humans innating ways of growing old and decaying. But moreover Blees states in an interview by Susanne Kippenberger, that the city is “full of endless possibilities”. Blees’ images present a sense of loneliness and decay, which contradicts how she creates a good image but allows for people to create their own interpretation of what the image means and represents, with a cue of the book title My Suicides, its as if her work is telling you something but makes you interpret in your own way with context of mysterious, run down, decayed areas , and the title of her books as a cue to how you should think about her images.
In conclusion Blees’ work presents a lot of mystery within her run-down images, whilst also showing how well she can transform abandoned dirty areas into a well-made composition of images. Although her work revolves around the same theme, each of her projects are presented in a way where you interpret her images differently with the same theme. By using the title My Suicides for example she prompts the audience to what to expect in her images, in this case lonely and abandoned areas with wider a point of view. I believe Blees’ practice in urban night photography is a way for her to show the template for the world we live in, in her case it is specifically London. She purposefully presents a view of stepping back in what you are looking at, and the world we live in today. Her images during the night shows the less chaotic context people live in day by day, and she presents a beauty within the images, as if she does if for the awareness for people and a way for restoration of an area to see it in a different light. The choice of contrast between warm and cold lighting whilst conveying mystery presents a deeper connection to the world around us because it makes you question your surroundings and take a closer look at areas you might not ever appreciate. This is an important factor in this area of work because there are limited things to photography and when you find an area or place it has a lot of history and context withheld in it, but is also a way of expressing emotion because colours can be much brighter and appreciated in these images especially when you link it to the context. Blees’ work personally relates to nostalgia in my context because memories are very vivid and in my case dark because a lot of the my more memorable experiences would be during the night around areas like this.
Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German photographer who mainly takes photographs during the night of urban areas in cities and urban areas, where she likes to use long exposed images because of the lighting she can get from the streets. She is influenced a lot by cities, without considering the noise and chaos, she sees it as flexible, where anything can happen and be photographed, where the pace of life slows down, and the city lights up, where there is as much space as you could possibly want. She grew up in the country side which she says, “Your future is mapped out for you from the very beginning”, which shows her influence for the mix of urban and street photography Rut uses. People believe that Rut Bless Luxemburg is separated from most photographers because of her ability to find beauty in the most depressing and unlikely places, where she creates an ominous mysterious look in her images.
Rut Blees images create a lot of mystery and during her night photography include no people, but rather the template for where people are, which is why you can see footprints in the water and mud, it shows the presence of people without directly showing them and even going into personalities. She looks at the bigger picture, of where people live and where, and how we live in a broader picture. The area she has chosen for her images (London) is perfect for what she is aiming for, because of how although it gets silent at night, there is still perfect lighting everywhere and things still happening or areas that have been left for the night to take over, which she chooses to image.
I personally like Rut’s work, especially her urban and street because of the aesthetic it gives off with an abandoned look and deterioration and isolation. I also like how she mentions about her photography in her urban night area aiming more towards showing the template for people in society and what we use to travel and be efficient in every day life which we might not pay attention to. Her images use a lot of contrast especially with her use of warm and cold colours which I like because the specific tints and vibrancy she uses work well.
Troy Paiva is an American Urban night explorer, who’s work takes place a lot of the time in the desert, where he captures abandoned, rotting, and broken down infrastructures that have been left behind. He is a light painter, by using different colours and types of lighting it creates a specific style of work which he presents in his images.
Troy explains he love taking images like these more for the aspect of his environment he works in, as he says, “I love the surreal feeling of wandering through an abandoned subdivision, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. Your senses become heightened and you feel the weight of time”. With just this quote alone you can easily link his work to the “sublime” and “romanticism” as this is the whole aim of what his work expresses, abandoned areas with a brightly coloured image creates an array of emotion within the image. Troy’s belief and work relates a lot around his favourite statement of “Ozymandias”, which is a reference to an Egyptian pharaoh, who described in a poem, where his statue crumbles down, as a way to expose praise to the subject of art’s ability and preservation. So in Tory’s work he photographs abandoned, broken areas, and within his images he almost preserves it through his brightly coloured lighting.
Troy’s early life was a graphics designer, whilst still taking a couple photography classes, and even used to teach how to pain. As he grew up like many people at the time, he learned different skills in the artistic world, especially photography. By discovering light painting in photography he was hooked instantly and began to develop his work, which worked in favour of his environment, which was abandoned, mysterious areas.
I want to explore an area of street/urban night photography around jersey, which is perfect because we are separated into different parishes which each have their own village of houses and streets like their own little cities. I want to try and capture images of these area’s at night with illuminate lighting to create an aesthetic image with dim lighting but some with bright lighting and experiment with mixing and layering the images using photoshop and lightroom, whilst capturing a lot of people in the images and characters. Its more nostalgic than important to me because from the age of 11-15 I was always out on my bike with friends doing anything we could find that was fun or find interesting, for example trying new things like skating, finding abandoned areas around jersey because there isn’t much else you can do in jersey. But what connects this nostalgia to a night theme is that most of this would happen during winter which had shorter afternoons, and a majority of my fond memories are with fuzzy lamp lighting during the dark, and I think a lot of people can see the areas I’m going to photograph as nostalgic because most people would be out in these areas as a kid, finding what to do or having fun. And I want to represent that in a clearer way with higher quality but also contrast it with some images with docile areas to show the balance jersey has between the packed areas and more docile areas. I’m going to be mainly going to areas which have a good amount of lighting during the night but also areas which have people in to capture them in a moment or in motion. I’m going to present these images in a photobook as I like the layout it has. I’m going to have more of a wider perspective of my images through framing areas from a far away but not too close, and I’m going to be looking for a lot of shapes of street lights, apartment areas, people who present an aesthetic. These images will include a lot of architecture and well light, street areas during the night, with natural and artificial lighting. I don’t want to use too much forced lighting or and over use of lighting otherwise this wouldn’t look or feel like the aesthetic I’m aiming for.
