the difference in their approach to image-making in the streets.

William Klein is considered one of the most influential street photographers of all time. He had a ‘no non-sense’ attitude to street photography and liked to confront people. He rebelled against many of the contemporary styles of photography during his time, especially that of Henri Cartier-Bresson and other “classic” street photographers. Klein experimented with lots of different focal lengths during his career– but he is most well-known for his up-and-close and personal work with a wide-angle lens.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is a French photographer who is considered to be one of the fathers of photojournalism and masters of candid photography. He wanted to capture the ‘everyday’ in his photographs and took great interest in recording human activity. he used geometry, symmetry, and structure in his photography. he used Wide-angle lenses, close and intrusive. He believed in being invisible, using small Leica cameras, and never cropping his photos. he took photos of everyday life, street scenes, politics, and human behaviour and often captured candid photos across the world. he also took photos of major historical moments. when he took his photos he avoided using the flash, he avoided manipulation the photo or staging the photo. he would wait for the perfect moment to take the photo as back then you could only take a certain amount so he didn’t want to waste them.

Henri Cartier Bresson photo

visual

The photograph is a brilliant study of shapes and lines: the circular wheels echo the curves of the steps, while the straight edges of the wall and stairs create a contrast. The boy and his bike are positioned in such a way that they seem to be part of the architecture, integrating human activity with the urban environment.

The image plays with light and shadow, enhancing the 3D effect of the surfaces. Cartier-Bresson captures the boy mid-motion on the bike, freezing an everyday moment of play and freedom.The timing creates a sense of rhythm and flow, consistent with Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” philosophy.

technical

The photo has high contrast — the dark silhouette of the bike and boy stands out against the lighter background of the steps and wall. This contrast sharpens the image’s graphic quality and draws the eye immediately to the subject.

conceptual

The boy’s presence introduces a narrative of childhood, movement, and life in the town. The everyday nature of the moment lends authenticity and spontaneity. The photo exemplifies Cartier-Bresson’s ability to blend human subjects with their environment, showing the poetry of urban life. It transforms a simple scene into an artistic composition, highlighting beauty in the mundane. The image reflects Cartier-Bresson’s deep respect for geometry, light, and timing, combining all these to create an iconic street photograph.

William Kleins photo

this photo is very up in the ladies face, compared to Henris photo which doesn’t have anyone’s face in it and the person doesn’t know their being photographed. William Kline didn’t really give people personal space, he was very confrontational and didn’t mind going up to people. He favoured chaos, blur, grain, and distortion.

when he took his photos he Used wide-angle lenses, close-ups, and high contrast to create intense, often confrontational images, this could often make the public uncomfortable. however when he took photos you could feel the presence in the photo.

in most of his photos there was a sense of Urban chaos, fashion, and most of all street life especially in cities like New York, Tokyo, and Paris.

Broke all the rules of conventional photography, he was intrusive to people but also had a unique photographing method

his photos are in black and white which makes takes away the distractions of colour, this lets the viewer to focus on the composition, contrast, and emotion which is shown through light and shadow. the photo has a high contrast due to it being dark shades of black and white. he has also created a motion blur, in the photo the background is more in focus than the foreground.

this is a very crowded photo as there are many people, the main focus point is the woman however the people in the background are also important as they help create the scene of the picture.

Who are they?

Bernd (1931–2007) and Hilla Becher (1934–2015) are considered the most influential German photographers of the post-war period. Over the past 50 years, the couple and artist duo captured the aesthetic of disappearing industrial facilities, often making the overlooked structures visible to viewers for the first time. Their strict adherence to particular formal principles and their typological approach gave rise to the idea of photography as conceptual art. The Bechers taught at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf and shaped the work of an entire generation of photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth. Sprüth Magers represents the artist couple’s Estate.

Hilla Becher was a German artist born in 1931 in Siegen, Germany. She was one half of a photography duo with her husband Bernd Becher. For forty years, they photographed disappearing industrial architecture around Europe and North America.

They won the Erasmus Prize in 2002 and Hasselblad Award in 2004 for their work and roles as photography professors at the art academy Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

What did they photograph?

Industrial structures including water towers, coal bunkers, gas tanks and factories. Their work had a documentary style as their images were always taken in black and white. Their photographs never included people.

They exhibited their work in sets or typologies, grouping of several photographs of the same type of structure. The are well known for presenting their images in grid formations. 

This sequence of photographs, showing pitheads from British mining and quarrying sites, were taken from 1965 to 1974 and is representative of the way the Bechers chose to display their work through their career, arranging images in groups according to type. Pitheads, known as such in the United Kingdom and as winding towers elsewhere, were positioned at the top of coal shafts and served as mechanisms for hoisting gear into and out of mines. These nine images, arranged in rows of three, all show the pithead from the same distance and perspective, centering the structure in the frame and tightly cropping the surrounding buildings. In each case, the horizon is low and the backdrop cloudy; the pitheads themselves rise up as triangles, with circular rigs positioned at top of the structure, where a vertical base intersects with a metal diagonal leading into the mine itself.

my response to typologies:

Here is my typologies photoshoot, I decided to take photos of car wheels as they’re all very similar however they all have different features. I changed them into black and white to help them be more unison.

Mood Board

street photography is candid photos of people and things in every day to day life. it allows the photographer to capture a natural image most of the time without people knowing, therefore its a completely natural photo. Street photography is one of the most challenging but at the same time one of the most rewarding genres of photography. photographing people in their everyday environment is not easy, it requires patience, hard work and confidence to walk up to strangers and take photos .Although photographs have been taken in streets since the very beginnings of the medium in the 1830s, it is in the 1920s that street photography in the modern sense comes into being. As the pace of urban life begins to quicken after the First World War, and the consumption of images grows through the illustrated press and popular cinema. Street Photography is normally spontaneous and tries to capture a moment or a split second that would have, without the photo, gone unnoticed.  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï and André Kertész are two main street photographers from the 1930s.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. 

the concept of the decisive moment is that Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.

Photo Analysis:

The lighting in this photo is taken in black and white however has more of a dark tone. the light reflects off the puddles on the floor and makes a reflection of the man walking and the building in the background.

the zebra crossing creates leading lines towards the main focus of the photo which is the man.

The man in the photo is in focus suggesting that the the photo was taken with a fast shutter speed. the background of the photo is less in focus than the foreground which helps to not distract the viewer of the main focus and also makes the photo not as busy.

this is a candid photo therefore the man didn’t know he was being photographed however I think the meaning behind this photo was to show a frozen image of a man on his way to work. the reason I think this was he is wearing a suit and looks like he is in a rush. Cartier Bresson saw cameras as an extension of the eye. I believe this is a good example of the decisive moment as it is taken at the perfect moment just as he is crossing the road with his reflection of himself in the puddle.

all of Cartier Bresson photos are taken in black and white as its taken on an old camera. the repetition of his black and white images creates visual pleasure to the people looking at his work as his photos are all uniform.

why is a camera an extension of the eye?

The key difference is that some people use photography to capture physical memories that our minds can’t, hence the camera being an extension of our eyes, and others make a living from it by using it as a form of art through creative media production.

what’s the physical pleasure of making photographs?

the active engagement with your surroundings as you move, frame, and focus. There’s a unique joy in the deliberate, focused movements and the immediate sensory feedback of the shutter click, which creates a moment of flow and presence. This physical interaction not only heightens your awareness of light, texture, and space but also connects your body and senses directly to the creative act, making photography a deeply immersive and gratifying experience.

how can photography be likened to hunting?

photography can be likened to hunting in that both involve a patient, focused pursuit of a target whether it’s an animal or the perfect moment. Like a hunter, a photographer must observe carefully, anticipate movement, and choose the right moment to “strike” by capturing the shot. Both require stealth, timing, and an intimate understanding of the environment and subject behaviour. In this way, photography becomes a hunt for light, expression, or a fleeting scene, turning the act of making an image into a dynamic, almost primal challenge.

The decisive moment.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. 

the concept of the decisive moment is that Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.

Photo Analysis:

The lighting in this photo is taken in black and white however has more of a dark tone. the light reflects off the puddles on the floor and makes a reflection of the man walking and the building in the background.

the zebra crossing creates leading lines towards the main focus of the photo which is the man.

The man in the photo is in focus suggesting that the the photo was taken with a fast shutter speed. the background of the photo is less in focus than the foreground which helps to not distract the viewer of the main focus and also makes the photo not as busy.

this is a candid photo therefore the man didn’t know he was being photographed however I think the meaning behind this photo was to show a frozen image of a man on his way to work. the reason I think this was he is wearing a suit and looks like he is in a rush. Cartier Bresson saw cameras as an extension of the eye. I believe this is a good example of the decisive moment as it is taken at the perfect moment just as he is crossing the road with his reflection of himself in the puddle.

all of Cartier Bresson photos are taken in black and white as its taken on an old camera. the repetition of his black and white images creates visual pleasure to the people looking at his work as his photos are all uniform.

in this photo there is leading lines from the railings in the background towards the main focus which is the man jumping over a photo. those lines also help to frame the subject of the photo. in the reflection you can see that its more blurry due to it being water. there is also a rule of thirds and the main subject falls into the right third.

The fence in the background acts as leading lines, the horizontal lines of the railings frame the leap and the main subject which is the man jumping.

By Making the image black and white, it strips any colour which helps emphasise the detail and gives the photo more depth. This also makes the viewer have more attention to the detail of the photo rather than the colour. There is a strong tonal range, which means there are really strong highlights and shadows which draws you in. The black and white add nostalgia to the image which links to memories.

Cartier Bresson used a Leica rangefinder, he used a 50mm lens because it allows him to capture images from afar and up close and in the moment. This allowed him to be a really effective street photographer and allowed him to use a more quick and obtrusive shooting style to be more discrete and capture a more natural image.

He had clarity and sharp focus, which added more depth to the photo, which suggests a smaller aperture. There was a quicker shutter speed as there was no motion blur except in the reflection from the puddle.

He takes advantage of the natural light and he uses the pure authenticity of the moment. while bright light is usually a nemesis to photographers, it allows for more dramatic lighting and frames the shadows. The light in the sky reflects perfectly onto the puddle on the ground. since there is a puddle in the foreground, it allows for equal light in the background and the foreground and makes the centre more in detail.

The Gare Saint-Lazare became one of Henri Cartier Bresson’s most renowned and popular photos, revolutionising street photography and the idea of the candid photo, signifying the beauty is something so ordinary and showing that everyday lives can be beautiful too. It perfectly captured the moment, having to wait for the optimal time and freezing that split second in time.

Who is he?

Alexander Mourant is an artist, educator and writer based in London. His first publication, The Night and the First Sculpture, was published by Folium, 2024. He has since been commissioned by FT Weekend Magazine, Hapax Magazine and The Greatest Magazine, and included in BJP, The Guardian, Photograph, Photoworks, METAL Magazine and Photomonitor. He won the Free Range Award and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Mourant is a Member of Revolv Collective and Contributor at C4 Journal. He achieved BA Photography at Falmouth University, and MA Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He is a Lecturer in Photography at Kingston University.

This is one of his most famous photos from his collection ‘Aurelian’ which explores the interior space of British butterfly houses. To get the colour blue he has taken a piece of blue glass  from a church window and had it specially cut to fit the lens of his camera. this meant that all the pictures he took were blue.

in this photo there is the reflection of lines of the tower and the trees making a repetitive pattern on the sea.

These are my photos from Harve des par, I’ve edited all of them to make them black and white therefore they all look the same this way my photos look neat and organised.

Photo evaluation:

The lighting in all these photos is natural as it was during the day time however I have changed the photos from natural to black and white as it still shows good tones between the light and dark areas. the photos being black and white help the viewer not get distracted by the colours and therefore they look more into the image. it also helps tell a story by it being black and white.

New Topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape

These photos have an uneasy contrast between man and nature, it shows the responsibility we hold on the landscapes future.

Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape. An exhibition at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York featuring these photographers also revealed the growing unease about how the natural landscape was being eroded by industrial development.

What was the New Topographics a reaction to?

The New Topographic Movement represented a paradigm shift in the world of photography and had a profound influence on contemporary art. It forced viewers to reconsider their perceptions of the environment, the impact of human activity on the landscape, and the aesthetics of the ordinary.

Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.

Historical Context : Post-war America struggled with

Family’s living in America before the war struggled with many situations such as Inflation and labour unrest. The country’s main economic concern in the immediate post-war years was inflation. The baby boom and suburbia. Making up for lost time, millions of returning veterans soon married and started families. Isolation and splitting of the family unit, pharmaceuticals and mental health problems. They also struggled with Vast distances, road networks and mobility

CASE STUDY: Stephen Shore, Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975, chromogenic colour print

• Foreground vs background | Dominant features
• Composition | low horizon line | Square format
• Perspective and detail / cluttering
• Wide depth of field | Large Format Camera
• Colour | impact and relevance
• Nationalism vs mobility vs isolation
• Social commentary | The American Dream ?
• An appreciation of the formal elements : line, shape, form, texture, pattern, tone etc

The aperture is a little slow as the car on the left hand side is slightly blurry. the photo has a wide depth of field, the lighting is natural, from the sun and the photo is probably taken around late morning/early afternoon. the lighting in this photo is quite cold. there are many shadows with hard edges from the sun which helps us find out what time of day it is. across the picture there is vertical lines from the lamppost and signs. there is the rule of thirds and as the photo has a low horizon line it lowers the composition in the photo. the mountain is also hard edge, it is miles away but the photo makes it looks a lot closer than it is. the image looks like its leading the viewer towards the mountains in the background, indicating to get out of the busy area. the photo is connected to transport and getting around, the photo has at least 3 petrol stations and 7+ cars, nothing in the photo is coming towards the viewers however it makes it look like if you were to follow the road you would get to the mountain. in this photos the most seen colours are red white and blue which creates a sense of nationality as they are Americas colours of the flag.

Harve Des Par photoshoot

Here is my contact sheet which consists of 353 different photos that i took on our school trip to harve des par.

In this photo there is the reflection of lines of the tower and the trees making a repetitive pattern on the sea.

This is before and after editing some of my photos. I’ve edited all of them to make them black and white therefore they all look the same this way my photos look neat and organised.

Photo evaluation:

The lighting in all these photos is natural as it was during the day time however I have changed the photos from natural to black and white as it still shows good tones between the light and dark areas. the photos being black and white help the viewer not get distracted by the colours and therefore they look more into the image. it also helps tell a story by it being black and white.

Before ad after some of my photos.

panoramic landscapes:

A horizontally extended visual representation providing a wide view of a landscape or other scene, in photography made by joining a series of shots or by using a wide-angle lens, and in film by pivoting the camera horizontally from a fixed place.

Advantages

There is a wider angle of view, so you can more of the landscape. eg, foreground, background and the middle ground.

There is compositional freedom, which means as we can assemble the resulting panorama from as many frames as we like.

The quality of the panorama is much higher compared to the single shots from wide-angle lenses in particular, as we avoid all the aforementioned negatives of wide-angle lenses.

Disadvantages

There needs to be a high level of skill due to the difficultly of taking panoramas. The photographer should already be quite experienced, as they have to cover a wide range of activities.

 The image does not display the fine anatomic detail.

There are compositional limitations. Even though wide-angle lenses can cover a really wide area, they are still not without limit. We are then limited by what we can or cannot fit into the lens’ frame.

David Hockey

David Hockney, a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, revolutionised visual art with his inventive technique of creating joiners. This method, which involves piecing together a mosaic of photographs to form a cohesive image, challenges and transcends traditional perspectives in both photography and painting. By fragmenting and then reassembling the visual field, Hockney’s joiners disrupt conventional viewpoints, inviting a deeper exploration into the intricacies of perception and representation. This introduction sets the stage to dive into the impact of Hockney’s joiners, underscoring their significance in reshaping contemporary art and photography, and illuminating their influence on artists and photographers alike

His joiner photos:

Hockney’s joiners are a fascinating exploration of perspective, time, and space through the medium of photography. This technique involves the meticulous assembly of multiple photographs to create a single, composite image.

The best way to do this is to use a medium focal length lens 50-100 mm, stand in one place, lock the exposure if possible or set the camera to manual so the exposure does not change and photograph the scene. You might start at the bottom left – sweep right then move up and sweep left – and continue until the entire object is captured. Be sure to overlap your images.

Here is my own panoramic photos i have taken

these photos were taken at Harve des par

To edit them, I used Lightroom and went to photo-photo merge – panorama. I then waited for it to automatically merge all the photos I selected together to make a panorama photo.

Image Analysis

There are different types of lighting due to over 700 images in this one photo, but I think it mostly natural outside lighting. You cant tell the aperture because there are many images combined.

‘Pear blossom Highway’ is showing a crossroad in a very wide open space, which you only get a sense of in the western United States. [The] picture was not just about a crossroads, but about us driving around. I’d had three days of driving and being the passenger. The driver and the passenger see the road in different ways.

When you drive you read all the road signs, to check where you are driving. When you’re the passenger, you don’t, you can decide to look where you want.

The littered cans and bottles and the meandering line where the pavement ends and the sand begins point to the interruption of the desert landscape by the roads cutting through it and the imprint of careless travellers

David Hockney described his circumstances leading to the creation of this photocollage of the scenic Pear blossom Highway in the north of Los Angeles. His detailed collage reveals the more observations of a road trip.

exposure compensation:

Exposure compensation basically helps you override automatic exposure adjustments your camera makes in situations with uneven light distribution, filters, non-standard processing, or underexposure or overexposure. It lets you take control of your image’s brightness by manually increasing or decreasing exposure.

exposure bracketing

when you bracket your shots you take exactly the same picture of your subject at several different exposures. This technique gives you a range of options to choose from when you’re editing. As a result, it’s much less likely that you’ll end up with a badly underexposed or overexposed photo.

HDR photos

HDR (high dynamic range) helps you get great shots in high-contrast situations. The iPhone camera takes several photos in rapid succession at different exposures and blends them together to bring more highlight and shadow detail to your photos.

Here are some photos i have taken using aeb