Gustave Le Gray

Le Gray was born in 1820 near Paris and trained there as a painter. Around 1847 he took up photography. Even before making the marine images, he became one of the most renowned pioneers of the new art. His architectural, landscape and portrait photographs, his writings, teaching and inventions were all highly influential.

The Great Wave, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur. He took the view on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier. 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. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye, rather than the camera, perceives nature.

“It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts. That is its sole, true place, and it is in that direction that I shall always endeavor to guide it” – Gustave Le Gray

Dafna Talmor

Dafna Talmor is a London based artist, photographer and Lecturer who practices encompasses photography, spatial interventions, curation and collaborations. She creates her work by using two different negatives and cutting them up with a scalpel to merge the photos together when developing them. Talmor combines colour negatives of landscapes that she has been collecting for years and transforms them into visually striking compositions that are devoid of man made structures.

Comparison

Dafna Talmors relationship to photography’s histories and a growing awareness of the climate crisis have have all contributed to designing a project which attempts to explore how photographers have created unusual and provocative visions of the natural world. Gustave Le Gray also focused on the idea of photographing the natural world as the dramatic effects of sunlight, clouds, and water in Le Gray’s seascapes stunned his contemporaries and showed his eye for nature. At his time photographic emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum which means most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure of both landscape and sky in a single picture. Le Gray solved this problem by printing two negatives on a single sheet of paper: one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky, and sometimes made on separate occasions or in different locations.

What is Anthropocene ?

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?

The time many people refer to as “Anthropocene”. 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. The world is getting progressively more polluted so photographers are trying to raise awareness about this issue.

Mandy barker

Mandy Barker is an international award-winning photographic artist whose work involving plastic debris in oceans for more than 13 years. Working with scientists she aims to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, highlighting the harmful affect on marine life, climate change and ultimately ourselves – leading the viewer to take action. her work has been published in over 50 different countries to illustrate key academic and scientific research papers about current plastic research.

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. He works in places around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. His work often connected to the concept of sublime.

“We come from nature. There is an importance to [having] a certain reverence for what nature is because we are connected to it… If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves” – Edward Burtynsky

Both Artists have similarities and differences in their style of work. Mandy barker focuses on collecting plastic waste and laying them out to give them a sense of characteristic and beauty but also aims to spread awareness about the severity of todays pollution. Where as Edward Burtynsky takes photos of the more overall view of pollution and how it is manipulating our surroundings and our lifestyle. His style of art work gives the world a more dystopian look.

Subjects

1. Abandoned buildings

2. Harbours

3. Plastic waste

4. Trash

5. Industrial machinery

The locations

1. La Collette
2. Town
3. Beaches
4. Harbour
5. Airport
6. Streets and car parks

Final images

The two images below are my best images as I feel that the monochrome look gives them an ominous and solemn look.

I went out on a walk and took pictures of old buildings and sculptures

final edits

About Typology

A typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency which involves subjects such as the environment and photographic process.

Typology was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher who are a rare artist couple, began documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’.

The Becher’s had worked in the steel and mining industries which was their initial focus. They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed. After collecting thousands of pictures of different structures, they noticed that they often shared multiple distinctive qualities. Together, they went out with a their camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward and objective point of view. They shot only on overcast days to avoid shadows, and early in the morning during the seasons of spring and fall. If they went out on a bright day they would usually wait for a cloud to block out the light to exclude any necessary light.

A mood board of their work.

First i flagged the images that i wanted to keep

Then I created another virtual image of the ones I liked and turned it black and white.

My final images

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I feel that the images above relate to Robert Adams as it shows the development of society corrupting the natural environment. This is an element that robert Adams loved to focus his images on.

The image above is taken by Robert Adams.

New Topographics photography refers to a genre of landscape photography that emerged in the 1970s, primarily in the United States. Characterized by a departure from traditional scenic representations, New Topographics photographers focused on the man-altered landscape and the impact of human development on the environment. In contrast to the romanticized and idealized depictions of nature, New Topographics photographers presented a more objective and often critical view of the suburban and industrial landscapes. The term “New Topographics” was coined from a landmark exhibition held in 1975 at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York, titled “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.”New Topographics photography played a crucial role in reshaping the discourse around landscape photography, influencing subsequent generations of photographers and contributing to a broader conversation about the impact of human activities on the natural environment. It was coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.

Robert Adams

Robert Adams is crucial to the New Topographics movement and the field of landscape photography due to his influential work that epitomizes the movement’s ethos. His photographs, often taken in the American West, capture the evolving human-altered landscape with a stark and contemplative style. Adams’ images are characterized by a quiet and understated aesthetic that invites viewers to reflect on the profound changes brought about by urbanization and suburban expansion. His compositions often feature mundane scenes like housing developments, roads, and parking lots, yet through his lens, they become poignant reflections of the human impact on the environment. One of Adams’ notable contributions is his ability to merge artistic expression with a critical examination of societal issues. His work goes beyond mere documentation, offering a thoughtful commentary on the consequences of unchecked development and the loss of natural landscapes. Through his photographs, Adams prompts viewers to confront the complex relationship between humanity and the environment.

The pictures below are created by Adams.

Robert Adams bibliography

Robert Adams  is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came famous in the mid-1970s through his book The New West. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Hasselblad Award.

The picture above shows a minimalistic house with the focal point of a figure of a woman standing in the window while surrounded with rectangular shapes around such as window frames and doors. The monochrome look of this images gives it a solemn and isolated feel. Due to the age of the picture it is likely that the woman in the picture is a housewife who is unchaperoned.

In the areas I have circled I am going to take pictures around some lanes and fields which are in St Lawrence.

The images above are taken of different lanes in Jersey.

I am going to be taking photos of natural landscapes such as fields, Lanes and woods. while trying to avoid man made objects such as houses and cars. I am also going to try and avoid capturing people in my photos up close. I am going to make 2 sets of images inspired by both Ansel Adams and Josef Schultz, Another aspect which will help determine my decision is what the weather is like, If the weather is windy and raining I will be able to capture more lively and chaotic pictures due the trees moving. On a bright day I would be able to capture more light which would differ the colour of the picture.