George Marazakis, born in 1976 in Creta Island, Greece, studied Mechanical Engineering and currently works for the Greek Ministry of Justice. However, he photographs the Anthropocene scene in rural, vacant areas that have been abandoned by society in his ‘A Cure for Anthropocene’ project. These areas are lost and forgotten about and become consumed, because of society extremely quickly progressing through time, that the area is not needed, although it still leaves a mark and impact on the environment around it, restricting growth and areas for ecosystems to thrive in.

His photographs show the pace at which the environment is damaged and how much damage is actually happening. He portrays the side of nature which is not right in from of us like pollution which is everywhere, his photos are in more excluded areas showing the degradation of our planet.

“If human civilization is in fact a disease, then it can also be the cure. But if the cure to the planet’s disease isn’t self-restriction, it will result in self-extermination. After all, the salvation of the planet is a different concept than the salvation of humanity.” – Marazakis

Chris Jordan is an American artist, photographer and film producer. He has won many awards for his photography including the Ansel Adams Award for Excellence in Conservation Photography and the 2007 Green Leaf Award from the Natural World Museum and United Nations. He is famous for his photographs capturing litter and mass consumption. A lot of his photos show the disturbing truth of how the populations littering has an effect on nature. He does this by capturing images of the rubbish including plastic packages and toys inside the stomachs of dead birds. His photographs focus on the negative part of how humans live, rather than taking photos of beauty, he includes the unpleasantness.

More of Chris Jordan’s similar work is:

• Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption (2003–2006) – A series of photographs portraying the magnitude of America’s waste and consumption.
• In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster (2005) – A series of photographs taken in 2005 showing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
• Running The Numbers I: An American Self Portrait (2006–2009) – A series of photographic mosaics depicting visualisations of statistics related to America’s consumerism, social problems, and addictions.
• Running the Numbers II: Portraits of global mass culture

The term ‘anthropocene’ derives from “anthropo”, meaning “human” with “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time. Anthropocene is the period where human impact has dramatically changed the natural land and its environment. This includes things such as:

• Global Warming/climate change
• Emission of carbon dioxide
• Extinction
• Ocean acidification
• Habitat destruction
• Widescale natural resource extraction
• An increase in extremeness and frequency of severe weather conditions e.g. earthquakes, tornados and storms

Photographers are exploring this concept to bring attention and awareness to the situation. By them doing this, it shows people the truth about what is really happening in the world and highlighting the severity of these things and that we need immediate change.

The photographs that come from this issue are both beautiful and ugly/jarring. This is because the way that some images are captured, they are appealing because they might show a large area of land which has patterns or colours that draw your attention. However, there are also images that do capture, in raw, the intensity of these situations and a lot of these types of photos are very unattractive and unpleasing to look at. There are also photos which appear beautiful but the meaning or background behind them is horrible therefore changing your perspective on it. All of these images bring light on the environment and what is happening to it.

Although these photographers are helping, it isn’t necessarily solving problem. Rather it is spreading the conversation, provoking thoughts that will hopefully provoke change.

This photoshoot is my response to the New Topographics area of photography. To take these photos we used the natural sunlight and adjusted the aperture and shutter speed to make sure the photos were good quality and well exposed. These photographs are mainly focusing on one area, Harve Des Pas beach, and the old and new buildings on and around it. This was a good photoshoot place as the beach itself has man made modifications on it showing how the urban world is and has been taking over. The buildings that surround it gave me a good opportunity to take photos of the beach alone, the buildings and both at once.

The photos below are some of my best ones edited into black and white:

The term, New Topographics was first made up by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of many American photographers whose photographs all had a similar aesthetic. This was that they were particularly banal – seemingly boring and unoriginal – and also mostly black and white. They were images of the urban landscape, involving different kinds of buildings and urban settings. This included places like parking lots, suburban houses and warehouses and these were photographed in a similar way to how early photographers photographed natural landscapes. Photographers who did this style of photography were:

• Robert Adams
• Hilla Becher
• Bernd Becher
• Nicholas Nixon
• Stephan Shore
• Lewis Baltz
• John Schott
• Franke Gohkle
• Joe Deal
• Henry Wessel

New Topographics includes urban settings rather than the natural landscape that was typically seen. It transforms these banal sceneries into something more. William Jenkins described these photos as “neutral” and “reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion, and opinion.”

People who viewed the images in the exhibition made comments such as;

“I don’t like them—they’re dull and flat. There’s no people, no involvement, nothing.”​

“At first it’s stark nothing, but then you look at it, and it’s just about the way things are.” ​

“I don’t like to think there are ugly streets in America, but when it’s shown to you—without beautification—maybe it tells you how much more we need here.”

Comments like these show the expectations people have on America and how photographers like Ansel Adams shaped their view leading to this surmise. These new landscapes were showing a more truthful version of life, showing that urban landscapes are becoming more.

Exposure bracketing is when you take two or more images of the same thing, one over exposed and one underexposed, and then merge them together. When merged, the final image has the best details from each photographs creating a photograph with a higher dynamic range. Exposure bracketing can be done by using the specific mode on a camera which, when you use it, it takes multiple photos at once so that they can be merged.

I took these three photos below, one overexposed, one underexposed, and one normal so that I can merge them together.

After selecting the three photos, I clicked photo merge and then HDR. This is the final outcome:

‘The Land and Us |  La Tèrre et Nouswas born out of a need to reconnect and prioritise Jersey’s precious ecosystem. In the exhibition, visitors will be guided through newly commissioned artworks exploring our past, present and future habitation of the land. Travelling from our ancient neolithic past, when the land was a sacred site of ritual, through our farming traditions, oral histories and earthly language of Jèrriais, to our woodlands, indigenous species and pathways that encircle the Island, The Land and Us is a place to gather and reflect on the natural world.‘ – ArtHouse Jersey

This exhibition shows different ways of portraying art. All of the pieces make you appreciate our environment more and think about it in more depth.

This was one of my favourite parts of the exhibition. I think it was really clever to create a pathway with gravel and dirt just like a natural one.

I also really liked this piece of art as it wasn’t just a visual experience, it allowed you to feel every texture of the slice of wood. I think this is really unique as it leaves more of an impression on you afterwards.

Ansel Adams was born in 1902, and during the ‘Great Quake’ his nose was broke. He never had this fixed so in school, he didn’t quite fit in and was very shy. This led to him moving schools many times until his father decided to have him tutored outside of school. During this time, he liked to go for walks around the forest and sand dunes around his house. At 14 years old, he got his first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie, and at this age he also visited Yosemite Park for the first time. He admired the landscape views that he saw.

In 1927 he was named the Sierra Club’s official trip photographer which became vital to his success as a photographer as his photographs and writings were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin. He was also heavily involved politically, suggesting improvements of other parks and wildlife areas. This lead to him being wildly known as an artist as well as representative of Yosemite National Park.

With this authority, he was able to win the fight of ensuring that Kings Canyon would be saved and not turned into a dam. To make this possible, he had to make a portfolio of images of Kings Canyon which was 17 inches tall, 13 inches wide and almost 2 inches thick.

Photographer Ansel Adams is known for his black and white landscape photographs of the American West. While taking his images, he would use visualisation to discover how he wanted the final photograph to look if he wasn’t impressed with the original look of it. He used different filters to take a photo to darken the dark colours and brighten the lighter ones. This added more depth and drama to the original landscape.

He created the Zonal System to use while taking photographs to ensure that all different tones were included in the image. The Zone system assigns numbers from 0 – 10 to different brightness values, with 0 representing black, 5 middle grey, and 10 pure white.

For my photoshoot focused on landscapes, I went to an area which had trees and nature like a forest but also some sand dunes. I tried to capture images of every aspect.

These are some of my final photos from the photoshoot:

John Constable was a landscape painter during the romantic era. He was one of the first artists of the Romantic movement to create landscape paintings drawn directly from nature. The image below was originally titled as Landscape Noon but is now known universally as the Hay Wain.

‘The Hay Wain’ not only shows the beauty of nature but also the charm of rural life. The horse-drawn cart, shows the agricultural way of life in the English countryside.

While we are aware that the Industrial Revolution is occurring at this time, this painting seems peaceful. There are no signs of factories or industrialisation tainting the image.

The painting looks detailed, but on closer inspection, it has been painted with expressive brush marks that show a real sense of emotion and life within the scene.