An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace.
A mix of Environmental Portraits taken by both past and contemporary photographers
Environmental images allow an insight into the lives of those pictured. For example, the image taken by Arnold Newman on the bottom right of the slide above, shows two men posing on a stage in a theatre – you can tell that they have some kind of connection to theatre, without knowing that those depicted, are famous playwrights, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. The ways in which environmental portraits are put together outline the subjects story in ways that don’t necessarily show it so obviously; for instance, the second image on the bottom from the left – all I can infer is that the person in the image enjoys swimming, however her facial expressions denote otherwise – strengthening the idea that despite Michelle Sank’s intentions, viewers could interpret “Georgia’s” story in any way, almost mirroring societal opinions (everyone has opinion on everything, even when they don’t know the full story)
The art of photography has some kind of strangeness about it. It shows the secrets of the world that are often missed by people in their every-day lives. A photograph is objective, whereas the meaning behind it is subjective. The way people see and feel about an image is the most important as the photograph doesn’t just contain what is in the frame, it works with everything outside as well. It turns “the ordinary into extraordinary,” posing the question, “how can something reveal so much, yet keep so much to itself?” Essentially, the photographic medium has no sense of what is important and what isn’t, the camera will record whatever is in the frame in complete detail. Some say that photography began in 1839, however, the overall concept of projecting an image has been around for over 1000 years.
The Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura
A camera obscurer is simply a blacked out box with a small hole that lets in light (the aperture on a camera). As light drips in through the hole, an upside-down image of the outside world is projected onto a piece of paper or canvas. To flip the image so it is shown the right way up, a mirror is placed inside a box at a 45 degree angle. From this, an artist can draw/sketch the image projected but this must be in complete darkness except for the small hole within the wall of the obscura.
Because of this principle, a room can be turned into a camera obscura which creates a mesmerising spectacle on the wall opposite.
This idea brought about the use of ‘Pinhole Photography’. This technique uses the most basic parts of a camera – a lightproof box, an aperture, and a light sensitive material. The process can still be done today on specially made cameras that use a low ISO, long shutter speeds, and a very small aperture. You can use higher ISO values however this doesn’t really change the quality of the image much except for a lot of grain.
It is very simple to make a pinhole camera however, as you simply need a box painted black on the interior, a pin to make the pinhole and a piece of card that can be used as a shutter. This very basic, but there are specially made pinhole cameras that have specially cut pinholes for sharper images and accurate exposures.
Nicéphore Niépce and Heliography
His initial experiment was to put sheets of paper coated in silver salts at the back of a camera obscurer. This produced unfixed negatives that disappeared soon after as they would fade to black under broad daylight. His first image was that of a window view landscape in 1816 – these images became known as retinas, time captured for mere moments.
By coating pewter with multiple light-sensitive substances, Niépce created copies of super-imposed engravings in sunlight – he named this method Heliography (sundrawing). After many experiments to work out the best way to capture these images, Niépce ended up using Bitumen of Judea and created what is known to day as the first photograph; a view from his window in Le Gras, France (1826/27)
This image, like most, had a very long exposure time of about 8 hours. Niépce was unable to reduce this time and his research was halted at this point as he was unable to easily produce images on paper. He later began to work with French physicist and painter Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) who went on to continue Niépce’s work after his death – creating what is known today as the Daguerreotype.
The Daguerreotype
The Daguerreotype was created in 1839 by Louis Daguerre, six years after his associates death in 1833. Daguerre developed the method to fix an image to a mirrored copper plate, creating a unique visual experience – essentially creating a mirror with a memory, especially as it created an instant positive image. Light was reflected through an image rather than it being held in paper. The edges of the plate are burnt (as you can see below), thus sealing the image in place making the image permanent. This also made it impossible to recreate, making it the only copy of that image ever. This was an expensive process, making it only affordable to the rich.
A Daguerreotype – mirrored copper plate with burnt edges denote this.
Daguerre also produced the first portrait (unintentionally) The top image shows a landscape produced by Daguerre, but within it you can see two people on the pavement (shown more clearly in the image below) This only occurred as the man stood did not move from that position the entire time the the shutter was open, simply because he was having his shoes shined. This is a very busy street in Paris and the only reason that there is no one else there, is because it was all moving will the shutter was open and only blurred or completely disappeared.
When it comes to mass producing images, money is the fundamental issue. When developing these techniques, there were three questions: how cheaply, how accurately, and how widely can an image be produced. Because of these reasons the world majority turned to the invention of Henry Fox Talbot.
The Calotype
The Calotype, created by Henry Fox Talbot, presented him the title of the true father of modern photography. Along with his accomplices John Herschel and Mary Somerville, he used silver salts (chemicals that darken when exposed to sunlight). Fox Talbot experimented with this and created the ‘negative’, a complete opposite of the real world in both colouration and perspective. He named these as photogenic drawings from which, he could produce multiple copies in a positive format.
Robert Cornelius – Self-Portraiture
Robert Cornelius stood in the back yard of his families gas lighting business with the accurate exposure from the sun and stared at a makeshift camera for 10-15 minutes. He stood still for that time and created the first photographic self-portrait. The image produced is commonly regarded today as the world’s first ‘selfie’; however it is more than that as any kind of portraiture in the beginning decade of photography was unheard of, and for him to produce this daguerreotype months after Daguerre had announced the invention in 1839.
Julia Margeret Cameron – Pictorialism
The idea of Pictorialism is to allow personal expression within the photographs, matching it to that of the other fine arts within society.
Julia Margaret Cameron began in 1863 and took many portraits, none of which were with professional interests. She simply photographed friends and family, often costuming them as if it an amateur theatre production. Her creative goals were influenced by the outward appearance and spiritual content of 15th Century Italian paintings, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. She said, “to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and the Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.” and “I believe in other than mere conventional topographic photography—map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form.”
Henry Mullins – Carte de Visite
Moving from London to Jersey in 1848, Henry Mullins set up a photography studio in the Royal Square with his partner, Mr Millward. Not much is known about his accomplice but by 1949, Mullins was working alone where he would remain for the next 26 years. He specialised in making “Carte de Visites”, small single portraits on paper. He would take 16 images at a time, creating around 900 between 1850 and 1873. As pictures were expensive at the time, mostly influential people were the only ones to have the photos taken.
Shore was an American photographer known for his use of colour in his photography and the banal scenes and objects. He took cross-country road ships in the 1970’s to capture some of his images. Many of his images capture the retro theme with the different colour lights and tones of the colours. His work has been published widely for over forty-five years and inspires many photographers.
some of his work:
Analysis:
Below is one of shore’s most famous images. I like how it is full of colours mainly, red and blue with the beige colours toning down the image. I think is stands out nicely and draws viewers into I because it is very simple and ordinary making it feel like we can all connect to it in different ways. The different shapes are all quite sharp with straight edges as well as different shapes and sizes with give a unique effect making us look for the detail. I feel this image follows an urban theme almost as the tones and shades of colours give an autumn feeling.
Typology is a single photograph or, more commonly, a body of photographic work that share a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects; environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject.
You are able to create your own typology work by grouping photographs into different types on the basis of their common features, with consideration of how each unique individual represents a particular pattern of features.
Typology was created by the German artists ‘Bernd and Hilla Becher’, who began working together in 1959 and married in 1961. They are best known for their typologies, often consisting of grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure.
My plan for doing the typology photoshoot would most obviously be taking pictures of specific things and areas round jersey. But this will include things like Boats at harbours. There isn’t anything meaningful behind it besides the aesthetic behind them if I edited them. For example: (Except it will include individual boats)
Furthermore, on the topic of harbours I’d like to take images of piers. There is a meaning behind this one, being that as a kid, lets say round 12-15, especially during summer, I would go pier jumping a lot, as a way of feeling alive from the fall and the instant shock of the water, even learning tricks to spice it up a little bit.
Harbours even have a lot of history behind them, from how old they are and through what they have been through, thinking about storms etc.
Bernd and Hilla Becher were two German photographers born in the early 1930s. They are renowned for their straightforward monochrome photos of industrial buildings which they did for almost 50 years! These photographs were a way of remembering as many of these buildings have been knocked down since their photographing.
Bernd studied painting and lithography at the Staatliche Kunst Akademie from 1953 to 1956. He then proceeded to study typography from 1957 to 1961. Bernd was very interested in functional buildings of industry and began photographing those which he had seen around his hometown. Hilla studied photography in Potsdam. Briefly, she also worked as and aerial photographer in Hamburg. Hilla moved to Düsseldorf in 1959 where she met Bernd. They began collaborating on their photos and married in 1961.
Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed industrial structures in Germany. Especially in the Ruhr. They also took photos all through Europe and North America.
Together the Bechers established a photography department in 1976 the school which Bernd attended (Staatliche Kunstakademie) and Bernd became its first professor. Their styles were so distinctive and their careers so successful that they came to be known as the Düsseldorf School of Photography.
The Bechers won awards for their photography such as the Hasselblad Award in 2004 and the Erasmus Prize in 2002.
Personally, I really like Bernd and Hilla Bechers work. I really think it is so interesting and I really love the style of photography how they found beauty in the strangest things as industrial buildings. and I would really like to use ideas from their work with mine on photoshoots.
The term typologies was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher became documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’.
Typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects, environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject
who is Bernd and Hilla?
Bernhard “Bernd” Becher (20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007) and Hilla Becher (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015) were German conceptual artists and photographer working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings, architecture, structures including water towers, coal bunkers, gas towers and factories around Europe and North America and are well known for putting their images in grids, this was to highlight the formal similarities of each structure. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award. They have been collaborating together as a duo since 1959 after meeting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1957.
The common themes they used was overlooked beauty and the relationship between form and function. Both subjects addressed the effect of industry on economy and the environment.
As a class, we went on a photography walk from Havre des Pas to La Collette – photographing the collaboration of the town and the seaside in the style of the new topographics. We used a shutter speed of 1/125 and an automatic ISO on the Tv setting to achieve a darker, less exposed look on the final images we took.
With each image, I tried to implement some form of natural formation with something visible manmade, to create a contrast between humans and nature, such as trees near a construction site, the beach and the pier itself, etc.
I also tried to feature some people in my images to give them a little more life – asking classmates to stand somewhere, taking candid photos of them, etc.
I then sorted through each photograph using the pick tool, rejecting images that were blurred, too close to someone, or ones that just didn’t have a very functional composition – too dark, too overexposed, etc.
After selecting the images I found the most interesting, I was left with 53 compositions that I could mess around with.
I then edited the photos that I liked the most and was left with these as the results – I mostly focused on the temperature of them, bringing out the blue and yellow hues.
My favourite images were these six, each having a good balance of colour range, texture, and lighting.
Rural landscape photography takes more focus on natural land, affected by humans, but in the less densely-populated areas, such as farmland or the countryside. Photographers such as Fay Godwin created pieces that capture a small piece of the sublime with humanity’s small additions to the natural landscape in these areas, like farmland, fenced-off pastures and meadows.
Fay Godwin
This works well with the concept of the new topographics, as it combines elements of nature with man-made structures – while still showing humanity’s impact on the natural world.
I could try to take a similar photoshoot, travelling to the more rural areas of the island, and taking photographs of farmland and fields to create a dramatic composition.
