Who Is He?

He was a French artist, and considered a master of candid photography. He pioneered the genre of street photography. He was one of the founding member’s of Magnum photos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Photos) but discontinued most of his images and opted to paint instead. “Photography isn’t just about images; it’s about capturing the essence of existence.” Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup, France, and began his career as a journalist and photographer in the 1930s. He served in the French Resistance during World War II, using his photography skills to document the war effort.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Cartier-Bresson became known for his innovative approach to photography, which emphasized capturing the essence of a moment or scene in a single frame. He believed that photography should be a way to reveal the human condition, rather than simply documenting reality. He coined the term “decisive moment” to describe this concept, which refers to the fleeting instant when all the elements of a scene come together to create a powerful and meaningful image.

The decisive moment.

The book Cartier-Bresson penned in 1952, in French, was called Images à la Sauvette (“Images on the Run”). It was quite literally about taking pictures in a dynamic and moving world. He used the term “decisive moment” in his writing, with very specific meaning, but the term was appropriated as the title in the English translation.

For Cartier-Bresson, the decisive moment was not just about capturing a specific event or action, but rather about capturing the essence of the human experience. 

Some key characteristics of the decisive moment include:

• A sense of tension or drama
• A feeling of anticipation or movement
• A strong sense of human connection or interaction
• A balance of shapes, lines, and textures
• A sense of depth or layering
• A strong emotional resonance

1. Timing: The ability to capture the exact moment when something significant was happening.
2. Composition: The way the elements of the scene were arranged to create a harmonious and balanced composition.
3. Light: The quality and direction of the light, which could add mood and atmosphere to the image.
4. Storytelling: The ability to tell a story or convey a sense of narrative through the image.

The decisive moment is not limited to specific subjects or genres, but can be applied to various forms of photography, including street photography, portrait photography, landscape photography, and more.

Examples Mood board –

What is a decisive moment.

A decisive moment generally cannot be re-create. It is a moment in time, it can be planned in a way that the photographer may wait for someone to walk past a specific structured place, where he has set up his camera perfectly. A decisive moment is also sometimes described as a miracle accident, something that wasn’t entirely planned but turned out amazing. An example of the decisive moment would be taking photos of a couple engaging in a romantic gesture, now if you were to ask the couple if you could take the photo it would change the way they act and therefore it wouldn’t end up being the same raw moment it once was. This is the whole point of a decisive moment, a moment before people change their behaviour and how they act, being just natural and just them.

Henri Cartier Bresson viewed photography in a special way

1. Photography as a way to capture the human experience: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography should be used to capture the essence of human experience, to tell stories about people, and to reveal the human condition.
2. Photography as a momentary capture: He emphasized the importance of capturing a single moment, often referred to as the “decisive moment,” when all the elements of a scene come together to create a powerful image.
3. Photography as a means to reveal the unconscious: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography could reveal the unconscious aspects of human behavior, revealing hidden truths and emotions.
4. Photography as an act of observation: He emphasized the importance of observing and waiting for the right moment, rather than staging or manipulating scenes.
5. Photography as a form of storytelling: Cartier-Bresson saw photography as a way to tell stories about people, places, and cultures, often using a series of images rather than a single frame.
6. Photography as an art form: He believed that photography was an art form that required creativity, skill, and intuition, and that it should be judged on its artistic merit rather than technical quality.
7. Photography as a reflection of reality: Cartier-Bresson believed that photography should reflect reality, but also acknowledged that it is always subjective and influenced by the photographer’s perspective.
8. Photography as a way to transcend time and space: He believed that photography could capture moments in time and spaces that would otherwise be lost, allowing us to transcend time and space.
9. Photography as a means to connect with others: Cartier-Bresson saw photography as a way to connect with others, to understand their lives and experiences, and to create empathy and understanding.

Leica rangefinder with a 50mm lens.

Henri Cartier Bresson was known for using a Leica rangefinder with a 50mm lens because, these cameras were compact, reliable and their design was very discrete and more hidden to the naked eye than other cameras of the era. This allowed him to take images without disrupting the moment. He also used the Leica rangefinder because of it’s stealth, quiet shutter which allowed sneaky photos to be taken without drawing attention. This silent tactic was crucial for someone who believed in capturing natural, realistic, authentic, upstaged moments.

Urban/ Industrial

Landscape/ Romanticism

Typologies

Anthropocene

AI Experimentation

What Is Meant By An Urban Landscape?

An urban landscape means a dense accumulation of building structures with a rich stylistic variety of shapes, sizes and proportions located over a fairly extensive territory. Urban photography is a genre of photography concerned with capturing scenes from urban spaces, such as towns and other ecological spaces. It has become more popular over the years as the world has become more urbanised.  Urban landscapes refer to the physical environment of cities or urban areas. It includes buildings (residential or commercial), infrastructure (roads, bridges), public spaces (parks), transportation systems (subways), and other elements that shape urban living. In simpler words, man made things that overtook the area.

In Order To Take A Good Urban Landscape Image You Should Consider:

1. Using a wide-angle lens
2. Photographing with a narrow aperture
3. Taking advantage of golden-hour light
4. Shooting street photos in context
5. Photographs from above
6. Having fun with long exposures
7. Shooting urban landscapes at night
8. Featuring interesting architecture

My Photoshoots:

Final Three Images:

I have used lighting within this image to create a mirror concept, you can see that the sun is setting in front of the car due to it being reflected within the car. By using this lighting it creates a new concept, not just like a normal shadow but instead an entirely new concept. It creates a light and dark tone, and a 3D element which creates a texture element. Its a form of space, you can see that the car is 3D due to what is reflected within. The context of this image in relation to an urban landscape in my eyes is that it is a physical environment, a public space. The idea of using a public car park came across to me when I was researching anthropocene, noticing just how many cars are on the island and how much they are actually polluting our earth. I wanted to create the concept of our beautiful planet and mother nature (the sunset), contrasted with what’s harming it (the car).

I wanted to take an image where the sun was high, not setting nor rising but just shining high, as if it was just the middle of the day. I have decided to use a model within this image so that I can portray the urban area of the skatepark to its fullest. I have used a skatepark too show how not all man made things are bad and harming the environment, this skate park is filled with humans burning calories and using up all their energy, providing more to the planet rather than damaging it all over again.

This isn’t one of my favorite photos, I do not like how blurry it is or how rough the lighting of the petrol station is being portrayed, but I love the idea of it. The idea of just casually using petrol and harming the planet when there are so many other options out there, like electric cars that’ll help the planet rather than damage it, but some people just cannot change in there stubborn ways.

Mandy Barker

Photographer Mandy Barker creates deceptively eye-catching images to document the pandemic of plastic debris in the world’s waterways. Barker, who is based in Leeds, UK, works closely with scientists to collect trash from our oceans and beaches on the edges of nearly every continent. One research expedition covered the debris field (stretching to Hawaii) that resulted from Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake; she has also explored the Inner Hebrides in Scotland with Greenpeace. Barker manipulates her findings in Photoshop, mimicking the manner in which ocean water holds these objects in suspension. Swirls of colors and patterns draw in the viewer’s eye, only to realize that these visually appealing compositions consist of garbage that animals have attempted to chew, plastic pellets, tangles of fishing line, and water-logged soccer balls. The artist describes her work in a statement on her website: The aim of my work is to engage with and stimulate an emotional response in the viewer by combining a contradiction between initial aesthetic attraction along with the subsequent message of awareness. The research process is a vital part of my development as the images I make are based on scientific fact which is essential to the integrity of my work.

Examples Of Her Work

Evaluation Of Her Work

Barker uses lighting in an intense but careful way, she doesn’t really use lighting to shadow anything or portray anything, but rather uses it to create the black background to portray the deep sea. This image doesn’t have any tonal range within the background but rather just a clean clear back background, there is a colour difference within the fishing line, which she has used to turn these pieces of fishing line into something of jellyfish. This image is very textured, within you can see that the fishing line is almost dimensional, it is living and popping out of the screen. The image creates a lot of pattern, repetition of debris, repetition of jellyfish. Her compositions creates a lead for the eye, with the finer details of the ‘smaller’ jellyfish within the background as they descend further away. Jelly fish can handle a lot of harsh conditions and with the amount we pollute our seas and the amount that our oceans are being overfished it is creating an environment where they can and will thrive. Her imagery is a form of conceptualism, it creates a concept and a meaning, taking what is killing the marine life and making it look like the marine life, which iterates that our marine life cannot be replicated no matter how hard we try, and once our pollution of the ocean kills it all off we have to face that consequence.

Simple Definition

“Typology is the study of various traits and types, or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classifying facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic.”

My Definition

A set of images, which have a common subject, all grouped together in one barrel. The similarity can come down to looks, emotions or even the vibe that the object gives off. It can include many things, for example a row of doors numbered 1-10, or even a group of food imported from a specific place on a shelf.

Examples

The Range Of Typologies

Typology can be found in all three of Portraiture, Landscape and Still Life studies.

Portraiture

Landscape

Still Life

Overall I think my main images that actually link to anthropocene and my artist case studies are these-

I overall think that I could’ve taken some more dramatic imagery to really portray the meaning and the feeling that anthropocene gives people.

What is it?

Anthropocene in a way is a unit of time, it is used to describe the period within Earth’s history where human activity started to have a significant impact on the planets climate and ecosystems. This period is also sometimes known as the period of the great acceleration, things like carbon dioxide emissions and global warming that have significantly impacted our planet.

Plastic Pollution

One main key aspect of the world’s pollution is plastic, the earth is now awash with plastic with millions of tons being produced every year, plastic doesn’t biodegrade which ends up littering soil and ocean beds. Scientists are going as far to study if plastic is the peak of anthropocene, the golden spike.

Why would we explore the concept

Humans tend to be very sensitive about their actions, humans like to think that they are the alpha and always correct, so bringing out their flaws and confronting them tends to get a rise out of them mainly in a positive way. By embracing anthropocene we can show humans what they have created and just how significant the damage they are doing is, which in turn will hopefully embarrass them in a way causing them to alter their ways and become better people altogether. It was a collective of the whole population that created this mess, so we will need a collective of the whole population to reverse these effects’ and save our planet, one person at a time.

Naomi White

Naomi Whites photoshoots include plastic bags under a studio light. This is to portray how this brightly coloured thing can effect so much of the world. As we know nearly all plastic ends up in the ocean due to litter being dumped into rivers.

“In Plastic Currents, the every day plastic bag is transformed by light, turned from something familiar into something strange. Undulating and fluid these forms transition from non-biodegradable, reviled plastic bags into seemingly organic forms, imitating the very nature they threaten.”

My Main Inspiration From Her

“Through explorations of the material I am interested in the way plastic responds to touch, its surface, its weight, how it clings to lighter elements like lint and dirt through static electricity, and the way each bag is its own marvel.”

Her description of the exploration of the material is going to be my main inspiration for my images, the images I would like to produce include the use of how plastic can transform, whether it be floating through the air, ditched within the sea or transformed into fashion.

Although I don’t want to just take images of plastic under a studio light to do this, I still think that she has been my main inspiration, showing the beauty of plastic but also how it can kill, taking something so regular and making it so unique.

Image analysis

The use of fluorescent lighting portrays the true colors of what would generally be described as just a ‘clear plastic bag’. This is also exposed by the bright white background. The 3 dimensional aspect of this image adds texture, showing all the crinkle’s of the plastic bag, showing its lifetime and portraying how it may almost be up. It all portrays a very clear conceptional idea about how bags and plastic have gone through alot, showing how this inanimate object can react to things such as touch and useaged.

The use of fluorescent flash studio lighting creates a more dynamic effect, it is a lot more intense than natural lighting which really extenuates the blue,green and yellow colours of the plastic bag which wouldn’t be seen during natural daylight. There is a sharp, focused lens used, generally meaning higher aperture which really captures a more significant depth of field when it comes to all the ageing within the plastic. It has a good tonal range and looks like a higher exposure has been used, as the image looks to have been taken on a white light box. There is lots of texture and tonal range within the image, for example the gradient of the different colours as the plastic wears down, and the wrinkles which can be seen throughout the bag have a 3D form. The images has been selectively cropped to show just the inner/middle of the plastic bag where it would have aged the most. Which leads the eye into this middle ground forepoint. This plastic bag has a historical context too it which can be displayed throughout its ageing. It makes a person wonder, where the bag would have gone and been, how many people would have used this bag and where it actually originated from. But it also leads people to think about how many of these bags are actually out there, how much waste humans have made and how it will never die. How much harm we must have caused to the earth by using thousands of these each day, and the worry about the fact that this is still continuing, there is someone purchasing a brand new plastic bag right now which will yet again never die, and we are just letting our earth suffer. Naomi White made people feel this by taking something so regular that we see every day and simply making it look different by adding more depth into such a simple thing.

Lucas Foglia

Today, nature both heals us and threatens us. As we spend more time than ever indoors looking at screens, neuroscientists demonstrate that time outside is vital to human health and happiness. Yet, we are vulnerable to the storms, droughts, heat waves, and freezes that result from climate change.

His project ‘human nature’ contains a series of images of humans pictured surrounded by nature’s strongest elements’ such as volcanoes, and caves. The photographs examine our need for wild places in the context of the Anthropocene.

My Main Inspiration From Him

Obviously just being a A-Level student I don’t have the facilities to photograph all these crazy element’s of photography within Lucas’s work, but I want to still be able to capture an element of humans interacting with anthropogenic locations. This image is my main inspiration due to the way that the people are interacting with the natural landscape, and how they are still going through any weather, no matter the fact that they are walking separately they are still in this together, they are all-in the same location, doing the same thing, and battling through the same weather. I really like the idea of anthopece bringing people together.

Image Analysis

This image is very conceptual, with the lighting have a binary opposition of the dark sky and the bright fire. It portrays the extremes of mother nature, and how she can sometimes contrast herself. The tonal range within the image portrays of darker dimmed colours and then is contrasted by the brighter colours of the fire. This image also uses space perception to portray how humans can stand right next to the thing that they are using to destroy the world, and look proud about it, like that’s what makes them human. This image shows the raw elements and composer of anthropocene and how people are effecting’s the world.

This image has used natural daylight but also the natural flame behind the model to light up the image. It has a wild level of control due to the fire burning in a wild pattern. And has quite distant lighting. The depth of field is very deep, making you mainly focus on the lit up burning fire rather than the natural sky light. There is a motion blur at the top of the flame where it is turning from fire into smoke, oxidising. The image is quite grainy due to the use of moving light. It has quite a warm white balance, with the use of oranges and yellows spread throughout. There is a sharp shift in tone, when it comes to the grey dim background, bright orange middle ground and greeny dying foreground. The image is 2D but also 3D in a way, the woman stood still doesn’t seem to be popping out at all but the wild flame almost attacks your eyes. Your eye is led to the fire straight away, but then also led to the weird harmony and separation of the image, the way all the colours seem to be working together yet fighting against each other, there’s almost a tension within the image. Something that would instantly catch someone’s eye would be the deep black smoke coming out of the flames, our brains have been embedded with bad thoughts when it comes to black smoke, not just how bad that can be for the environment but also just how bad it can be for someone to breath in, it is a very conceptual image, making you really think. The essence of being placed in front of one of the strongest elements in the world makes people think just how easy things like that are, everyday people use lighters but the fact that the earth offers so much where you can just go out and abuse the fire element makes people really value the earth more, and may also make them think about their mistakes.