LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier is a talented American photographer known for her style and documentary like work which often explores race, social justice, class, and the impact of industrial decline. Her most famous project is called The Notion of Family, produced between 2001–2014, where she documents the lives of her mother, grandmother, and even herself in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town that was and still is devastated by the sudden collapse of the steel industry.

There is definitely obvious themes within her work and these themes include:

Key Themes:

1. Family and Identity: Frazier’s work obviously centers on her family’s experiences and revealing inter generational trauma and resilience amidst economic decline. The project also highlights the idea of family as a cultural and historical construct.
2. Social and Economic Displacement: Her portraits and images of Braddock, highlights the connection between the destructive industrial collapse and the social decrease of working-class Black communities.
3. Health and Environmental Issues: Her famous project foregrounds environmental racism and healthcare imbalance, engrossing on how industrial pollution and inadequate healthcare have affected diminised populations.
4. Portraiture and Intimacy: Frazier’s raw, and personal portraits question stereotypes of Black and working-class life, handing out a refinement representation of struggle and resilience.
5. Cultural Context: Frazier provokes the erasure of working-class, Black, and female experiences especially in mainstream narratives. This offers a window into a community that is often ignored in discussions about industrialization.

Reception:

The Notion of Family has been praised and is still being praised for its emotional depth and constant questioning of social constructs, earning Frazier an international recognition. Her work has been exhibited in major museums and is part of collections at MoMA and the Whitney. In 2015, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her contributions to art and social justice.

So in summary, The Notion of Family is an exploration of race, place, class, and blending personal narrative with broader social issues which offers a powerful, empathetic view of a undervalued community’s struggles.

Kürşat Bayhan

Kürşat Bayhan is an extraordinary Turkish artist and photographer who is known for blending themes like history, memory, identity, and contemporary socio-political issues. His interesting work combines conceptual and documentary photography, often exploring themes like migration, the urban environment, and the thick tension between tradition and modernity.

While he is not widely known especially internationally, Bayhans work is an important figure when in comes to contemporary Turkish photography. His projects challenge how personal experiences intersect with larger socio-political landscapes, often contributing to the discussions of visual culture and identity. He has exhibited his work both in Turkey and internationally, gaining recognition for his unique storytelling approach.

One project that is eye catching is the project callled “Away from Home” It is a photographic series which explores themes of feeling of displacement and migration. The work focuses on individuals who have been forced to leave their homes due to conflict or hardship which captures their emotional and psychological experiences of this difficult and unwilling exile. Through intimate portraits and documentary-style images, Bayhan humanizes the migrant experience, and reflects on feelings of mislaying, identity, and the search for belonging in foreign environments. The series also delves into the complex notion of “home,” highlighting the tension between the past and the present for displaced individuals. It also offers a personal and empathetic perspective on migration, beyond political or statistical stories.

Refrenencr:

Chat GBT

Rut Bleed Luxemburg

Rut Bleed Luxemburg is a German born British photographer she attended the London collage of printing where she then go on to achieve an MA in photography. how does she create her images? a lot of her images includes a long exposure to let her use the light in the streets only. this is technique is used in her images in the night that include reflections off the floor of street lights and buildings such as office blocks or even possibly capture cars moving along on the road.

One of her key interests is how the built environment shapes human experience and perception. She often focuses on the urban environment’s emotional resonance, particularly the intersections of architecture, the human body, and the passage of time. Her work can evoke both a sense of isolation and intimacy, presenting the city as a kind of stage where private, sometimes melancholic, moments unfold.

Luxemburg gained wider recognition with her series London Overground, which captured night scenes along the London Overground rail network. The images from this series depict a hauntingly beautiful, almost cinematic view of the city. The use of artificial light and the interplay of shadows give these photos an otherworldly, dreamlike quality. Her images often appear at the cusp of the real and the imagined, offering a glimpse into a hidden or forgotten side of urban life.

example images:

image analysis

Todd Hido

early life and career:

Todd Hido was born in 1968 in Ohio who had gained an interest in the American suburbs which would then become a big part of his work. His work was also inspired by documentary photography which had helped him develop his work into poetic, cinematic, and also blending aspects of narrative and fine art photography.

key themes and style of photography:

Hido’s most recognizable project would be the house hunting project from 2001. this project showed exactly what his style was about, low conditions in the night. these images in this project consisted of houses in the suburbs in the night through fog.

Another aspect of photography that Todd Hido explored was portraits. He mainly took images of women that would considered to portray the women in the portraits as vulnerable or other feelings, he did this to so people would perceive these images how they wanted to there isn’t a right or wrong answer its on what you believe

Impact and Recognition:

Todd Hido is considered one of the leading photographers of contemporary American photography. His work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums around the world and has earned him a dedicated following. Hido’s influence extends beyond fine art photography, with his work often being cited in discussions of contemporary American culture, film, and visual narrative.

He has also contributed to a wider conversation on the nature of domestic spaces and the ways in which suburban environments can both reflect and distort human emotions.

Conclusion:

Todd Hido’s work resonates due to its exploration of mood, light, and the deeper psychological layers that landscapes can evoke. His approach to photographing ordinary suburban environments transforms them into spaces of haunting beauty and emotional complexity.

example images:

image analysis

in this image I would believe that the lighting would be considered

Edgar Martins

Edgar Martins is a Portuguese-born photographer known for his evocative, contemplative, and often minimalist approach to landscape and architectural photography. His work blends formal precision with a deep sense of atmosphere, often exploring themes of place, memory, and human intervention in the environment.

Key Elements of His Work:

Landscape and Architecture: Martins frequently explores the intersection of natural and built environments. His images often focus on architectural spaces or expansive landscapes, but he presents them in ways that challenge conventional representations of these spaces. He’s known for creating photographs that blur the boundaries between the natural and the artificial.

Human Impact on Nature: In addition to exploring architectural spaces, Martins often addresses how human activity has shaped or altered natural landscapes. This can range from the environmental consequences of industrialization to the ways in which man-made structures interrupt or interact with the natural world.

Minimalism and Composition: His use of space is often quite minimal, drawing attention to the vastness or emptiness of a scene. His compositions tend to be precise and meticulously structured, focusing on light, shadow, and texture, and often leaving room for the viewer to interpret the spaces and their meaning.

Recognition and Influence:

Edgar Martins’ work has garnered critical acclaim for its intellectual depth and visual beauty. His approach to photography—combining meticulous technical skills with a deep philosophical inquiry into place, time, and human presence—has earned him recognition in contemporary photography circles. His work is included in numerous private and public collections, and he has exhibited internationally, including at major photography festivals and galleries.

His photographs are often compared to the work of other contemporary photographers who blend minimalism with exploration of place and memory, such as Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and others who approach landscape and architecture with a meditative, almost existential tone.

In summary, Edgar Martins is a photographer whose work challenges the viewer to contemplate the spaces and places we inhabit, to reflect on the passage of time, and to reconsider the role of human presence (or absence) in the environments around us.

example images:

image analysis

Yury LI-Toroptsov is a certified professional life coach, author and visual artist within Paris, France. Born in 1974 to a rural community in Vladivostok, a city within Russia, Toroptsov gained a prestigious scholarship in 1998 to the New School for Social Research in New York.

The core of Toroptsov’s work incorporates a multitude of culture – from his Far-Eastern origins, travels of America and his residence of France – in order to detail a story of identity, people and the permanence of myths. Nostalgic tones are rife through Toroptsov’s work too, through his recurring themes of memories and the secular(no religious connection or affiliation). Whilst living in Berlin, he explored the notion of fairy tales for adults, however the work that I am most interested in is entitled ‘Deleted Scene’.

HIS WORK:

In ‘Deleted Scene’, Toroptsov transports the viewer back to his home town within Russia to explore the echoes of his father’s memories who passed away before he turned two. With little to no memories of him alongside all reminders of him disappearing too, beside his camera, Toroptsov aims to unravel the neglected recollection of him. With his father being an amateur photographer, Toroptsov discovered his camera at age 9 with a strong curiosity due to it being the last personal thing connected to his father in his possession.

From the images that his father took, family archives of letters, keepsakes, group images paired with landscape images that seek out the distinct patterns within rural areas of nature instead of perspective images, Toroptsov highlights how the told and retold stories of his father were shared like folklore, the detail alternating on who was reciting the story. He also demonstrates the frustration of not being able to recall the early and limited time he shared with his father before his untimely death, for example one of the pictures show Toroptsov as a five-month-old baby lying on his belly on his parents’ bed fixated on the photographer – his father, who has thirteen months left to live. This dedication to someone who is so close yet still a stranger allows Toroptsov to begin trying to get to know his father even through death, and allows him to express the complete and happy family that he was part of, even if it is difficult for him to recall from such a young age. Knowing that this time was shared with his father, yet unable to relish in the memories to recollect and rewind, is represented through the mysterious tones that he depicts in this photobook.

Toroptsov includes archived images and letters in this photobook, however that is not the images that I am interested in as I have already explored the work of Phillip Toledano alongside Carolle Benitah, where they both already include this format of images in their work. Instead, I would like to look at the landscape images that he takes. Usually, I find that landscape images are very external and more documental rather than a personal, expressive image however, Yury Toroptsov seeks out the formal elements of:

• Line
• Form
• Shape
• Pattern
• Texture

As he travels through his home town of Vladivostok, a rustic community that borders with China and North Korea, Toroptsov focuses on the smaller aspects of the environment around him instead of taking a vague, wide-shot image of the whole area around him. Alternatively, he seeks out the smaller fragments that build up the community in greater detail, as if he is zooming in with a magnifying glass and picking apart his childhood without a father figure at home.

Some examples which I could find online:

This is just a small fraction of the locational images within Deleted Scene, however within the physical book there are a variety of images that are detailing what builds up this location, and becomes depicted in the book as something that gives Toroptsov nostalgia from his childhood.

I find that by picking apart his home town and employing the visual elements of form, shape and line specifically, creates ambiguity within the composition and adds directional factors into the images that make the viewer explore themselves. Looking at the personal connection that his father shared with this location in a minimalistic way makes the images carry a melancholic tone, although some of the images have bursts of colour such as the yellow body of water, each image carries a large juxtaposition within its tonality. What I mean by this is that the changes between the tones of the image are drastic and bold, showing that they carry a lot of emotion and sentimentality.

I am going to use the work of Yury Toroptsov in my personal study by following his naturalistic images specifically focusing on tone, line, shape and form. In my own work, I am going to go to locations that are linked with mine and my brothers childhood to represent the experiences that we have shared growing up, and highlighting these nostalgic places that I share memories with him as a child. As well as this, I may take images of locations that symbolise loneliness or appear to have a melancholic tone because this is a key aspect of the meaning behind my personal study that I want to share. For example, I am going to go to FB football fields as this is where my brother spent a lot of his time when he was younger as he played football frequently as one of his hobbies, or possibly going to Fort Regent to add information about the other sports he began to do as he started to grow up, such as boxing. I may or may not incorporate objects in these images, but the main focal point within each of these images is going to be the formal elements as this will provide a more interesting perspective on the landscape in a more subjective way, rather than being objective and documental in my landscape images.

Being that it is winter, I think that this will provide a more morose tone in my work due to the gloomy atmosphere it will bring into the background, similar to Toroptsov. In order to achieve the same effect as Toroptsov I am going to have to account for both the foreground and the background in order to make the composition consistent with its patterns, so I need to really seek out these spaces and be thoughtful about my images before I shoot them so that I can get this same effect of mystery and obscurity in my work. I think this will be really successful if I can execute it well, and I am aware of what to look for as a result of the topic on Jersey’s Maritime History as in my second zine I used this technique.

ANALYSIS OF HIS WORK:

This specific image from Yury Toroptsov’s ‘Deleted Scene’ was one of my favourites because of the sharp contrast between the saturated yellow tinge to what appears to be a lake, compared with a deep black colour from the natural landscape poking through underneath, such as sticks or leaves. Being the first aspect of the composition that grabs the viewers attention from its vibrancy, the sticks from underneath break this block-colour seal, disturbing its smooth blanket that it has engulfed the water in. This adds the initial layer on texture in the image, scattered throughout the lake in an erratic and unstructured way. This saturation of yellow adds a cautionary aspect to the image when paired with the chaotic sprinkling of these sticks and leaves due to their dark colour, creating a tone that already makes the viewer feel as if something has gone wrong here, not everything is the way it should be. The strangeness of the water being this colour is already warning enough, however this colour is commonly associated with warning signs of danger, meaning that this is conveyed to the viewer as unsettling. As the image is inspected more, this vibrancy isn’t actually the focal point of the image, just merely the out of focus background. Reflections of the surrounding trees are echoed into the yellow swamp below, adding an intricate pattern of lines in a variety of lengths and sizes to layer over one another. This creates a textural perspective to layer over this blanket of yellow that was initially thought to be flat, adding greater depth to the image and makes it come to life in a 3D manner. This layering of reaching arms off the branches of the trees can be interpreted as resembling his fathers connection to Vladivostok, being Toroptsov’s home town, and depicting that his heritage is all around him here. This is an obscure metaphor through the delicate pattern that the branches create which look like the veins within the human anatomy, being an accurate representation of how the blood vessels spread out in a randomised order, intertwine and vary in sizing. This could be Toroptsov’s attempt at trying to show that even if he doesn’t recall his father, he has the ability to honour his memory even if he is ultimately a stranger to him.

Links:

https://www.toroptsov.com/photographer/deleted-scene

Yury Toroptsov

Duane Michal’s is an American photographer, whose work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Michal’s first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michal’s manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michal’s has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michal’s singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Story Telling

‘I’ve always told stories. And it’s all about language and ideas rather than something, some description.’

– Duane Michal’s

Psychical Adaptation of Images

Michal’s (b. 1932) has continually rebelled against and expanded the documentary and fine art traditions. At the onset, he baffled critics who knew not what to say of his work, rejecting the notion of the “decisive movement,” the supremacy of the sensational singular image, and the glorification of the perfect print. As an expressionist, rather than going out into the world to collect impressions of the eye, he looked inward to construct the images of his mind, exploring the unseen themes of life, death, sensuality, and innocence.

How then do you feel about the presentation of your pictures on the internet?

‘It’s okay. I don’t think much about it. I do like the work to unfold. At an exhibit I would stand and read the whole series. But I like the punchline to be something else. On the internet, you see the picture sequentially, you can’t see them all at once, because they’re presented one by one [in a slideshow or on a scroll]. So that works.

For me I enjoy seeing an exhibit, but the book with remain for a long time and that’s important to me. I don’t think about an audience. I’ve always just worked in terms of myself. I don’t really realize there are people out there that see this work. I live very quietly. My tastes and the way I set up my life is really turn-of-the-century. I love books, I like reading, I like poetry. I have nothing to do with contemporary tastes, what’s hot and what’s not hot. I’m in my little time capsule, which is very cosy. It suits me.’

Duane Michal’s

Michal’s interest in narrative and story telling with his photography very much aligns with mine and has inspired me to primarily format my work in a book.

his words have really made me consider captions and written word on my photographs and how I will sequence my images to tell the story’s/ legends I am trying to portray.

next steps

My next steps after reviewing how Michal’s portrays a story through his photography is to story boards and chunk the legends will be working from into recognisable and destiny important areas of the story before I begin photographing.

Born in 1968 to a French Moroccan mother and an American father, Philip Toleando is a London-born conceptual visual artist, as well as growing up in Casablanca, who lives and works from within New York City, utilising his passion from photography after a decade of working as an advertising art director. Targeting primarily socio-political themes, Toleando believes that a photograph should act as an unfinished sentence, exploring and executing this through a variation of mediums; photography, installation, sculpture, painting and video. Toledano uses photography as a form of internal storytelling through typically using staged sets, for example in his project ‘The Many Sad Fates Of Mr Toledano’, he uses different models to represent different life events and lifestyles in a uncanny and unsettling way. Alternatively, Philip Toledano in his project of ‘Another America’ he uses an Ai generative tool in order to depict worldwide events, such as devastation from 9/11 or the Influenza outbreak in order to challenge the notion of truth in photography and in the media.

Growing up in London, the British photojournalist recognised for his photography concerning war and urban strife, Don McCullin, motivated Toleando in his early pieces, causing him to aspire to be a ‘combat photographer’. However, Toledano’s work is contrasted from this, using abstract metaphors in order to deeply explore his own personal views and experiences of the world.

The selection of images that I am most interested is from one of his photobooks entitled ‘When I Was Six’:

HIS WORK:

The six images above are just a small example of the solemn story that Toledano sought to represent in this narrated photobook, an anecdote of how the death of his sister, Claudia, at age nine, left an unknown and empty presence in his life. His exploration of this event resonates with the human psyche, with it occurring 40 years prior due to a fire. Toledano mixes still-life images, text and atmospheric, ‘heaven-like’ images to not only see this section of his life from a clearer perspective, but also put the viewer into the shoes of his six year old self in order to make them almost relive the experience for him.

These two types of images within this photobook; ethereal-looking patterns juxtaposed by Claudia’s childhood keepsakes such as hair, her school pencil, the box of which her belongings were preserved in and her baby tag detailing her birth. The way that the photo-book has been pieced together has been done very thoughtfully, thinking about the dream-like images first comes across as some sort of escape from the reality of Claudia’s death for Toledano, imagining these landscapes that connote emotions of peace, vulnerability and freedom from demons in his mind, even as a six year old who wouldn’t be able to process such a devastating concept. How well would a six year old be able to understand death, such a traumatic and disruptive event?

‘I have no memories of my life after my sister’s death for a few years, other than an obsession with space, planets, and distant universes. ‘

The quote above suggests to me that the inclusion of images surrounding space, planets, astronomy and universes is Toledano expressing his inner child. Such a trauma to a six year old would be psychologically altering as Philip Toledano wouldn’t of been cognitively ‘ready’ to acknowledge the passing of his sister. As he states here that he has no memories of life after Claudia’s passing, this determines the conclusion that these memories of such a difficult time in his life have been suppressed and blocked out so that he doesn’t have to face such a painful truth. However, this photo-book can be interpreted as a final release of this ordeal and ultimately preparing and trying to grieve someone who has already been gone for 40 years. This gives Toleando the capability to heal and come to terms with Claudia’s passing, however this also means that he can relive the memories that he shared with her, whether he is consciously aware that they exist. However, this movement and changing of direction adds form and depth into his work, making these images show the fluidity of emotion, possibly suggesting the loss of control he had over his own when he lost Claudia.

On the other side of the spectrum, Toledano presents objects linked the Claudia’s life in a randomised order, beginning with her baby tag. This could be purposeful for the start of the photo-book being associated with the start of life, with a baby being a new beginning. Toledano stated that:

‘After my parents died, I found boxes of her things, things I’d never seen before, neatly packed away, a museum of sorts, created by my mother. ‘

Being almost never spoken about again in the family due to the heartache, this enabled Philip to finally get to know his sister from a more ‘outsider’ perspective, getting an explanation as to who she was, how she loved her parents and what happened after she passed. Toledano compiles many images of Claudia’s belongings, as well as key pieces of information to tell her story, this being:

• Sympathy cards for Toledano’s parents,
• A large cardboard box (the box of which her belongings were in),
• Claudia’s birthday cards,
• A shoebox,
• A piggy bank,
• Claudia’s school photo,
• Small, singular images of Claudia at home or at school,
• Her school uniform,
• Notes and cards with Claudia’s handwriting,
• A book of hers,
• A handheld fan,
• Her school pencil, engraved with her name,
• Postcards,
• A giraffe ornament,
• Her hair,
• A photo album,

Towards the end of the photobook is when the images begin to get dark, painful and depressing. The last two images of objects capture the blueprint of which Toledano’s father had to draw his daughter’s own tombstone alongside the folder containing her certificate of death. I feel that, similarly to the beginning, this makes the photobook become more cohesive, being that the end of Claudia’s life is represented through the ending of Toledano’s storyline. Within the still-life images, Toledano moves his lighting to create shadows over the different objects involved over black card, angling the camera from different viewpoints to create dynamic lines over each object in a different way. The shadows are either solely parallel, going from one corner of the image to the opposed, however many of the images hide shapes within them, made out of shadows. Because these shadows aren’t directly centred around the objects themselves, this could be used for creating an ‘out of place’ tone in the work.

ANALYSIS OF HIS WORK:

This image from Philip Toledano’s ‘When I Was Six’ project really resonated with me and is one of my favourites from the photobook. This still-life captures Claudia’s school summer dress from when she was nine, placed neatly and cautiously into what seems to be an adult shoe box with the lid off, accustomed by tissue paper underneath. When the image is initially viewed, the first thing that I notice is the tension between the blocked black background with the checkered pattern on the dress. This juxtaposition creates a type of optical illusion as this is such a dramatic contrast, making this burst of colour and the textural aspect of the dress look out of place and adds an aspect of solemnity for the viewer to begin to pick apart the images to come. The way that the box is placed just out of centre, pushed to the side every so slightly, gives the image the theme of the uncanny, something that isn’t just quite right. I also find this where the box isn’t placed exactly straight, appearing to have been just pushed into the lens with no real thought behind it. I consider this to be a purposeful action, possibly to symbolise how this box containing all of the objects that are associated with Claudia, including her school uniform, were pushed aside for 40 years unbeknownst to Toledo, only to be discovered once his parents had passed away. The tissue paper behind the dress is crinkled, showing its age as its been discarded for so long. However, I find that this may resemble the memory of Claudia withering away from within the box over the years, specifically due to Toledo stating that ‘I have no memories of my life after my sister’s death for a few years’. What I find is the most motivating factor within Toledano’s image is the lighting technique he has used. This image has been taken from a bird’s eye view using artificial light, however this lighting is in a squared shape, possibly done by using a specific head on the light above or, if he didn’t have the equipment for this, perhaps using different material to create this square outline as it is not entirely perfect. As the lighting has been pushed to the left side to oppose the dress slightly to the right, I feel that this may be reflective of how young Claudia died, explaining why only a partial selection of the dress has been highlighted by this glow. I also feel that this may be representative of that feeling of emptiness and loneliness that we find after a loved one has passed away, as I said before, showing that the beginning stages of grief may lure someone to begin to question their place in the world, what their purpose is. This could be reflective of the shift in Toledano’s family dynamic when he was younger, demonstrating how Claudia wasn’t mentioned much again due to the heartache, making her life slowly disappear into the darkness.

Links:

https://mrtoledano.com/info/: Artist reference: Philip Toledano https://mrtoledano.com/slideshow/when-i-was-six/: Artist reference: Philip Toledano

https://www.lensculture.com/phillip-toledano https://time.com/3737833/phil-toledano-when-i-was-six-photobook

‘Anna Gaskell is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa. She is best known for her photographic series that she calls “elliptical narratives” which are similar to the works produced by Cindy Sherman.‘

Anna Gaskell (born October 22, 1969) is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa.

Known for her haunting depictions of young women in ambiguous scenes, Anna Gaskell began casting girls—specifically identical twins—to reinterpret scenarios from Alice in Wonderland. As the Serpent is from a series of photographs that shows the girls in close-up, extracted from the bright backgrounds that mark her other photographs related to this theme. Here, we see Gaskell’s model facing forward, yet the work’s title suggests that she is not posed as herself but is rather playing a role, namely the serpent of the image’s title. Discussing her interest in the Alice books, Gaskell suggests a enigmatic connection between their author Charles Dodgson (whose pseudonym was Lewis Carroll) and his inspiration, a young girl named Alice Liddell. Their relationship was “so complicated and mysterious,” Gaskell stated. “We don’t really know anything about it, but we know enough. There is the possibility of child abuse. His longing for her. I like the danger about it—at some point, being unable to explain it. I like the world that she lived in.”

Gaskell focuses on re telling traditional fairy tales and childhood stories through photography often capturing the story’s in a violent and disturbing light, when drawing inspiration from Gaskell I am most interested in her ability to create narratives through still photography and capture the essence of a story.

Book layout

Anna Gaskell does not only use photography to contribute to her story telling she also utilised simple drawings to chapter her images which I intend to imitate in my own work

Vinca Petersen is a British photographer and artist. Her photography book No System documents her life in the 1990s travelling around Europe with sound systems, putting on free parties. Her pictures began as a visual diary, documenting her leaving home at seventeen, moving into a London squat and becoming involved in the free party scene that grew across Europe in the 1990s. In the UK, free parties grew out of the rave explosion of 1989 when crowds of up to twenty-five thousand people would gather in the English countryside for illegal all-night events fuelled by MDMA and techno music. Petersen had become involved in this scene while still in her teens in London. They wandered through France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, banding together with other sound systems to put on huge parties in remote countryside locations in the summer, then separating to seek out smaller, more urban venues, such as empty warehouses, when the weather got colder. The resulting pictures are intimate and warm, celebrating the travellers without romanticizing them. Petersen shows the damage as well as the highs of drug use, the litter and destruction the travellers left, as well as the euphoria of their parties. 

This is a mood board of my favourite pictures from Vinca Petersen’s book ‘No System’. To me they document a lot of information from her travels around Europe, for example their party habits and waking up the next morning feeling rough and repeating it everyday for years. The journal entries provide information on how she was feeling and documenting what has happened that night or day which I find intriguing because it is a completely different life as they don’t have any rules where they are and completely free, compared to the party and rave scene now where you don’t hear much about illegal parties and raves in the countryside.

In an article written by Sheryl Garrat she says “The travellers played what Petersen describes as a constant game of cat and mouse with the police. As a result, they were wary of outsiders, especially those taking pictures.” This shows Vinca Petersen’s passion for photography as she was willing to get in trouble from her fellow travellers for taking images of their lives and parties. The article also states how Petersen’s images “have been taken by an insider. Working with small, inconspicuous cameras, she sometimes didn’t even look through the viewfinder before clicking the shutter; other times she’d leave a camera on a bar overnight and retrieve it in the morning to see what had been recorded.”

I chose to analyse this image of two men at a DJ stand because it shows the life they were living while they were travelling. The DJ stand being covered by different materials shows the little/no money that they had within their travelling lifestyle as they had little money to afford proper shelter and they probably moved to a different location after this day. This image was taken during the day because it has natural lighting and no artificial lighting as she is a documentary photographer and it was taken in somewhere like a forest or countryside as they only went to remote locations, otherwise they could easily get caught by the police. This image doesn’t romanticize the travelling and party lifestyle as it doesn’t make it look appealing, the image looks dirty and rough but also free. The main feeling that is presented in Vinca Petersen’s book ‘No System’ is freedom, it is shown all throughout the book and I can see it a lot in this image with the countryside background and knowing the backstory and facts about the book it makes me see it even more.

I have chosen to analyse this image of a person asleep in a countryside field because it represents the freedom and euphoria that they experienced while they were travelling around Europe with their sound systems drinking alcohol and taking drugs. This could either be an aftermath of a night that they had or just someone relaxing in a field of tranquillity. The image shows little about what has happened to lead up to it, but knowing that the book is set on them travelling and partying around Europe you can add up what the story of this image is.

Mood Board:

Mind map:

Who is Justine Kurland?

Justine Kurland is an American fine art photographer, born in 1969, based in New York City. Kurland holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in photography from Yale University. She is best known for photographing subjects in American wilderness landscapes, and her strongly narrative work is influenced by 19th century English picturesque landscapes and the utopian ideal as well as genre paintings, the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron and Mathew Brady, and illustrations from fairy tales. Kurland has used staged tableaux to explore the social landscape of girlhood, life on communes, and life in the wilderness. While creating her narrative of a teenage runaway, she was particularly interested in photographing within small, fringe areas of wilderness that remained between suburban and urban areas. She then talks to them about the scenes and scenarios she would like them to respond to and interpret for the camera.

Her photographs are also on view in NMWA’s exhibition Live Dangerously (September 19–January 20, 2020).

Justine Kurland, Shipwrecked, 2000.

What did Justine Kurland do?

Justine Kurland’s art is a vital part of the efflorescence of the staged photograph that began in the late 1990s. She creates her photographic series during extended road trips through the American Northwest or South. Using volunteer models she meets during her travels, Kurland constructs scenes of people rambling through the wilderness landscape.

“I photographed on extended road trips across the US, scouting locations and finding girls along the way. The girls would collaborate in staging the scenes. The girls performed scenes of caretaking that became actual caretaking: feeding each other, brushing each other’s hair, walking arm in arm. It was also a time when photographers were encouraged to stay in their lane. It was the 1990s, and it was considered exploitative for a white photographer to photograph a Black subject. I look at these pictures now, more than two decades later, and see that I both shaped and captured the racialized dreams of young white girls. ‘Girl Pictures’ (1997–2002) depicts a dream landscape, and a world at large, where even imaginations of resistance are misshapen by white supremacy”.

The 1980s was a time when many American women artists and photographers realized that they could be both the creator and the subject of their work, after battling many issues with gender roles and representations of women. I believe that Kurland created her photographic series to challenge these stereotypes by getting her models to perform behaviours that have constructed opposing ideologies to these stereotypes. But as things changed around Kurland herself, she identifies the election of Donald Trump as a moment where the meaning of her work shifted a bit. She stopped wanting to make that performance. She has since started new work she said is “all about looking inward and thinking about what I was running from.” She states that she no longer feels an uncomplicated identification with her old yearning for the West. But that shift helped her see something new in the photographs, which depict teenage girls in natural or nondescript settings, casting them in the adventurous roles of runaways and fighters.

Image analysis:

This image taken by Kurland caught my attention and stood out in comparison to the rest of her work. This is because it tackles a different approach to the Girl Pictures experimentation, as it contrasts to her other images by portraying less feminine qualities. For example, the two young girls in the image are dressed in minimal ragged clothing which straight away gives the impression that they have ran away from home and resorted to living outdoors. This challenges typical women stereotypes because usually women and young girls have been associated with

I want to explore fears, especially universal fears such as isolation and the dark. Imagery of insects is also a common fear which I think blends well with the dark. A lot of mine and others’ actions and decisions are dictated by fears. Fears of failing, being alone or potentially embarrassment but also, on a smaller scale: darkness. Darkness fuels fears as its essentially the unknown; you don’t know what’s in the room with you. This will be linking with the themes of ‘Observe, Seek and Challenge’ in a few ways such as making note of what’s associated with fears and linked themes and I will be finding locations and situations that would fit the theme.

To develop my project I will be taking photographs inspired by numerous artists: Todd Hido, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Raymond Meeks, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jose Conceptes and in part even Cindy Sherman. These will be abstractions, urban liminal spaces and potentially even some framed photographs to somewhat resemble a scene from a horror film. A large part of the photographs will be overarching aesthetic choices across all the images such as being in black and white with main focuses being light and their subsequent shadows.

I would like to present final outcomes in a photobook so that I can create a narrative without set time limits that would be present in a film. I want to document the experience of walking into a dark, dingy house with the feelings of a spider on your back and something resembling a silhouette sat in the corner and interspace with photographs of urban spaces to disrupt and create uncertainty. I will start with images resembling film stills of someone entering a building and interacting with it. From there I will begin to explore more abstract imagery of feelings associated with such locations and any spaces that catch my attention.

Any photographs of people will have their identity obscured. Any pointers to identity such as the face or full body shots will be obscured or left out because it isn’t the identity of the people that matter as much as it the experience and feelings associated. For every place I photograph I will make sure that the light is the main interest. All objects, people and locations will need to be in some way abstracted or obscured to emphasise the uncertainty. I wont be taking any photographs in a studio. Instead I will be taking images on location both inside rooms and outside the buildings. Text wont be spaced throughout as a fear induced mentality is irrational and illogical. I might manipulate a few of the images and try some collage techniques. In terms of AI technology I might try it out since it can create nonsensical and dream like outcomes which I could use but I’m not entirely convinced it will work out. If I make use of photoshop to create manipulated images then I will need to create a more surreal/dream like sequence focused on the irrational aspect of fear. If I don’t and I create more candid looking outcomes then the project will be more about the fear inducing imagery and ideas as opposed to the headspace.