Monday, 30 January 2012
Irving Penn
Irving Penn, ‘Girl Behind Bottle’
For my chosen iconic fashion image to deconstruct I am going to look at Irving Penn’s ‘Girl Behind Bottle’.
This photograph was taken in 1949 for Vogue Magazine, this being one of his earliest prints for them. Irving Penn started in a background of fine art, however, he thought of himself as a mediocre painter at best and saw little success from it. Shortly after his venture into painting he found himself in New York where he started his first prints for Vogue.
The magazine, being a global success, focused on the highest and most innovative forms of fashion. It lead the way in the upper classes setting standards and being a major, if not THE major, influence on the fashion industry. The magazine however strives further still from mere upper class expensive fashion, it also draws on political and social issues, and on surrounding art forms that it reflects within its articles and the fashion featured. In short it was the Avant Garde of the fashion world.
The themes of this magazine are completely embodied within this particular piece Irving Penn created. The Model is Jean Patchett, who was the leading super model for Vogue, and was the highest class envy of women and fashion lovers.
The camera however does not hold her in focus, she was the icon of Vogue for decades, and was already their most used model in the 1940’s, so she is an identifiable factor in this image, whether she is in clear focus or not.
The use of Penn’s subtleties in his symbolism is quite intricate in this photograph, as he draws on several individual symbols, and interlaces them together.
Looking at individual items and the mise en scene here, we have the women, dressed very formal, and fashionable, with her jet black long gloves, and the black shoulder padded dress, whether or not we identify her as Jean Patchett, we still instantly identify this woman as sophisticated, fashionable and in the high circles of the upper class. This is identified predominantly by her clothing, and then by her cigarette, she is smoking through a long, fine, cigarette holder, as particularly in the 1940’s smoking was seen as desirable and sophistication in a woman, particularly through the dainty, feminine cigarette holder, as she has elegance dedicated to even the way in which she draws upon a cigarette. The next part of this cigarette that identifies her as the high class desirable woman, in that it is being lit for her by a man, she does not waste time lighting her own cigarette, men leap at the chance to do it for her. The man (identified as male by his sleeve), is not within shot however, merely the arm extending to light the cigarette, which means that he is meaningless in comparison to her, he is a mere extension to serve her, completely de-personified.
Both the wine glass, and the bottle next reinforce this element of class, red wine being a long standing signifier of wealth, culture and sophistication. The positioning of the bottle however is what interlaces all these symbols, as Penn has focused his camera on this bottle, which as stated is a strong symbol of wealth and glamour, and Penn utilizes the reflections in this bottle, to show a distorted form of the model within, but the distortion is just right to make her seem like an Art Deco portrait within this bottle. This idea of the reflection personifies her the model, as a work of art, and a work in keeping with the Avante Garde styling of Vogue. The model however is still present as a real person, in a real scene behind this art. Irving Penn has placed his camera at angle just perfect, to see what we overlook in everyday, he has put the viewer in the sweet spot, where if you look at a regular scene just right, you see everything it represents. With the model out of focus as well, be her an icon, this lack of focus gives her ambiguity, it takes away her identity from her body, so that she becomes simply a symbol of ‘The Vogue Woman’ and not, model Jean Patchett. In doing this Penn has effectively interlaced everything Vogue Magazine stands for, into this one photograph. It is the Avante Garde, it’s readers are catching a glimpse of this perfect ‘Glamour World’.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
January Assessment
The Object
Our first unit given was one called Object and Body, beginning with the object. The task set was to create a still life piece, with a theme centralised on a current issue or topic that you (the photographer) feels passionately about.
The topic I chose to tackle was 'consumerism', the definition of this being: "the preoccupation of society with consumer goods". My first item of research on this subject was a documentary called ‘Objectified’, this was a documentary based on the nature of a products design and manufacture, approaching mainly from a product designers point of view. There was one quote in this documentary however that stuck in my mind, which was: “Make what was now, look like then, so that people want our now”. This made me focus on the corporate backing to consumerism, and that we consume goods at a habitually alarming rate, to the extent when the purchasing of these goods loses all meaning.
After a tutorial, it was brought to my attention that I was crossing into two areas of consumerism, and so I chose to look less at the consumer society as a whole, and more of a statement about our self identity with these products, or rather lack thereof.
I was unclear of my visual style for this piece, until I saw a series of photographs by Danny Treacy called “Them”, which was a series of outfits constructed from strangers clothing.
I took this and decided to use fashion and clothing as my signifier for the consumerist products, as fashion is one of the most prominent and ever changing aspects of consumerism.
Next I looked at the nature of fashion, and decided that a mannequin would represent my consumer, as I am looking at the idea of meaningless or ‘soulless’ behind consumerism, a life size doll would be perfect to show the facade of consumerism.
I lastly needed a reinforcing symbol to the idea of ‘soulless’ and also something to make the mannequin replicate a human more prominently, so I chose an empty mirror frame, as it is a common habit to check oneself in the mirror, but adhering to old folklore, the lack of a reflection signifies the absence of a soul.
Environment
Alongside our Object and Body unit, we were given a unit called The Environment. In this unit we had to create a pastiche to one of three choices, and next to create three of our own images based on our own conceptual approach to representing landscape.
Our lectures began by looking at the birth of Romanticism in landscape paintings, and then in early landscape photography such Ansel Adams’ work on the American landscape.
As we looked at the Romantic movement, I began remembering what I had learnt of the Romantic movement in Poetry in my English A level, and this reminded me of poets like Wordsworth and Blake, but most predominantly, the work of John Claire. Who’s work was heavily influenced by England’s Agricultural Revolution.
This revolution was described by historian Mark Overton as “The shift to Capitalism in the agricultural world.” The main part of this revolution meant that all land had to be owned, and was no longer free.
I took this and began exploring this idea of an imprisoned land, or quarantine, something wasted as it is unused yet denied to us.
After a tutorial session where I displayed a test shot depicting a broken fence lying on a field, I was advised to pulled back a little and to show these vast denied landscapes more clearly.
I was also recommended to look at John Darwell’s work, ‘Dark Days’.
Looking at his use of the fence as a barrier between the viewer and the land, I decided to adopt this visual concept, but to elaborate the idea of the barrier into something far more domineering and overbearing, so I utilised low angle shots to over emphasise these barriers around the land.
I focused on high contrasts, and giving the fences far more focus in the foreground, but so that you could still make out what the fences blocked, but it has lost it’s detail and life along with it’s freedom.
For my pastiche I chose Robert Adams' 'On Signal Hill'.
Doing my best to replicate this shot, I chose a location on the edge of a hill, in Gillingham overlooking Chatham, so that I had a populated area behind my trees. Unfortunately I could not find a location with actual trees present and an appropriate view, so I actually used a 3 foot high plant shot up close to replicate the trees, and then appropriately angled my camera to proportion my sky, city, and foreground as close to Adam's as possible.
I chose a high aperture of F32 to make sure I maintained focus as much as possible in the foreground and background, and I exposed for the urban area at 1/2 a second to silhouette my foreground. I shot this at roughly 6a.m. in order to use the morning mist to replicate the fog hovering above Los Angeles.
Environment - The City
For our second task in our Environment unit, we are asked to investigate an element of the urban space that most interests us, be it political, metaphorical etc.
As I began my project on the urban environment, I at first found it quite hard to come up with a solid idea, or element of the urban space, that I wished to capture. So I began first by looking through visual sources, in search of inspiration.
My visual reference and idea eventually came from Ridley Scott's movie 'Blade Runner'.
When I see these scenes I very much see many parts of London, a mismatch if you will, where the binary opposites of culture sit next to each other as one. One could argue that this creates a loss of value in these cultures, as the abnormal becomes commonplace, however what I see in this is simply acceptance.The city holds a taster of the rest of the world if you will, from this cut and paste element from many different cultures.
The Body
For our unit on 'The Body', we where asked to find a person that is unknown to us, and then to create a portrait of them. For my model I chose a local blues guitarist and singer named Liam Lynott, I chose him as he plays at many pubs I go to, and I have always been impressed by his set. The main reason he intrigued me, is not just his musical talent, but his style, he is a blues guitarist, yet he gets sandwiched between 'pop rock' bands. He always simply got up and played his set, regardless of the crowd, he acts almost as if we're not there, he simply plays. There is a simplicity and a purity that I wished to capture in that, he never shows a care for the crowd or popularity, he simply plays, he is a musician, a musician plays music, and that seems to be the only factors he cares for.
When researching other artists, Arnold Newman stood out to me, as I was fascinated by his 'Stravinsky'.
After looking into Newman's 'Stravinsky', I got out his book and viewed many of his portraits, both his lighting and his method of tailoring his sets around his models' proffesions and personalities was a concept I very much wanted to utilise. My model, as stated seemed to simply be a musician, or that was all he would reveal; Newman himself stated in his book on portraits that he is"convinced that any photographic attempt to show the complete man is nonsense,to an extent.We can only show, as best we can, what the outer man reveals." So I tailored my set to be simplistic and ambiguous as to where it could be, I set up my lighting, but left the brick wall blank, so that it may be, a studio, a venue, or a street in which my model is playing, it is an ambiguous and technically irrelevant factor to my model, so long as he is playing the venue need not exist.
At first I tried to mimic Newman's piano silhouette, using my models guitar case in it's stead, however after shooting this and reflecting upon the set up, the guitar was too small and object to effectively place in frame, but also the meaning behind the shoot did not match my model. So I combined my set up inspired by Arnold Newman, with a method from Phillip Lorca Dicorcia, who photographed commuters, but without their knowledge, to capture them without bias. I took this idea, and simply asked my model to play a set piece, as though he where busking, and after a while, he forgot his surroundings, as I intended the venue became irrelevant to him, and he simply played. I shot as he played, in an attempt to capture this simplistic honesty, about his music.
Pastiche
For my Pastiche I am using Brassai's "Paris After Dark No.27"
Brassai's visual style is very much in the Film Noir styling, utilising night time shots and the man made lighting in order to create this idea of mystery within the lights and shadows.
This shot was taken on 400ISO Ilford Black and White Film, on a Broncia SQ-B, with an Aperture of F9 and a 12sec Shutter Speed.
Looking at the alleyway I found it perfect for my Pastiche as it had a cobblestone paving, with merely a few scant sources of light, the main of which being an old victorian style lamp. I found this location mimicked Brassai's 'Paris After Dark' quite effectively in framing, light sources and also in architecture, as it quite an enclosed alleyway, there is no real hint of a modern world in sight.
Monday, 28 November 2011
The Contemporary Urban Environment
Beginning with Rut Blees- Luxemburg, we see a very unique interpretation of the urban environment. Rut Blees focuses on the cityscape using a 5X4 camera, which is not what one would expect as your camera of choice for an urban environment project, again not what you would expect for urban photography she uses long exposure times most of which are around 10 minutes long. She uses this camera and exposure in order to draw on the fullest of the uncontrolled ambient lighting in the area, street lamps, windows revealing lights and so forth.
She tries to capture a sense of a world we do not see, a world behind our world almost, hence her strange camera and exposure choices for this body of work. There are no people present in this image, or rather all of her images in this work, at least not clearly. But she ensures that is some kind of evidence of a human presence here, for instance the chair and the drink inside the red container. The way this is lit however and how the colours are all brought out makes it an incredibly vivid and almost playful, wonderland approach to this particular scene, it is as though through the long exposure to draw out the colours and textures of this scene, the landscape and objects themselves are given life on their own.
Her use of water in this particular piece makes a perfect metaphor for what she creates with her work, this idea of the mirror world, the human world we have made but suspended in almost a form of spiritual limbo.
Rut Blees talks a lot about the relations we have with water, particularly rivers. She references Friedrich Holderlin in an interview speaking about how the river is this ever moving entity that connects places and brings them to the sea, but through its reflection it also connects us to the sky, bringing these two separate elements together. Holderlin sees this relation close to a form of relation with God, and Rut Blees has taken this idea to joining her worlds with our worlds.
This series was all taken in Swansea, UK, though you would not be able to significantly identify it as a particular location from these images, Swansea is in actual fact the very opposite at a glance of this exciting wonderland styling in Rut Bless' images. Typical of many places in Britain it used to be an industrial area, mostly steel works, much of which was destroyed in World War II and then rebuilt without industry after, and so there is a sense of loss of life in the, all built with 50s style flat pack buildings and tower flats one could at glance view it as a depressing place almost.
Certain earlier pieces of her work like DVLA show a more recognisable Swansea with this building, it seems like an incredibly overbearing presence, there is only the smallest amount visible at the bottom of the frame visible of the rest of the city.
It is still presented to us in a way it would not normally be viewed as it is given it's darted strip of light from the office lights and the grey lines of it's windows really cut through these strips. The tones however are still very grey, and it is quite a dark image.
She says that as her work continued she developed the motto, "To get out, go in deeper" and when we compare DVLA to Towering Inferno we can see this journey of discovering her parallel world and the motto of exploring deeper and closer apply through the series.
We get this idea of immersion and understanding through the work, as we see parts of Swansea, but not in the way you would typically expect, as we see the DVLA building, we see a block of flats, or a car park, but we don't see the locations, we see an understanding of the area, its almost a way of hinting about the people and life in the area, but in a much subtler way, almost in a spiritual way.
This idea of capturing not what you see as such, but more what you experience, or what you feel is a concept that drives many artists, particularly Vera Lutter, who began really as a sculptor and conceptual artist in Munich before moving to New York.
She works with the camera obscura, creating direct imprints on paper negatives.
She rejected the idea of the lens, the negative and the print of standard photography, as she wanted to record her feelings and experience directly.
She explains it as beginning with her first apartment in New York and being fascinated by the lights, sounds and busyness of the streets, and she wanted to create a process of viewing it with her experience, as the apartment was central of her experience, she wanted to transform it into a container for this art piece, making her window where she watched the city her lens, the room she experienced it became the container and she replaced her body that felt the experience with the photographic paper.
This began her use of the camera obscura and the incredible exposure times she took these with.
Where Rut Blees uses the 5X4 format with exposures ranging around 10-15 minutes in order to visualise this spirit world, or the imprint life and experience leaves on a location, Vera Lutter takes her experience in raw form, using the giant paper negatives and skipping printing negatives into a straight, view point to viewer piece.
The majority of her work takes to looking at places of industrialisation, looking at the current and the old, the shifting changes between that which man uses to push for industrial fabrication and that which is abandoned until it takes a life of its own. From this idea of natural and man made progress and constructs she moved to another aspect of cities, which is the transportation side, how do these cultures and peoples that inhabit cities in such vast quantities get there? What of the product of their culture they bring with them? Which began her work looking at the constructs we make for this vast shift from place to place.
Again through out her work she utilises the camera obscura for this 'raw form image'. The direct transfer of experience.
We can compare and relate the intentions of both Rut Blees and Vera Lutter in their journey of capturing not what we see but what we feel.
As experience and emotions are not tangible things, but the two struggle to record it, to convey it and show it without it losing it's meaning, are it is not something quite there as such but it is something recognisable.
The methodology of the two differs in camera choice and stylistic approach but they are two of the same type of artist in that, there are those that struggle to mould and shape what they see and control it to convey what they wish, and then there are those that will not alter, that will wait, observe and try to understand the meaning behind what they see, until they find a way of showing that hidden image behind the every day image. With both Vera Lutter and Rut Blees they do not alter their scene in any way, they keep it as they see with their eyes, but then find a way to show it to us as something else, the experience of the event and not the construct of the event.
We have a similar meaning to Richard Wentworth's work with the photograph. He is technically not a photographer, he is a sculptor, he describes his relationship to the camera as a tool for bringing small portable versions of the event after it has occurred. Unlike Vera Lutter of Rut Blees, he does not actively make any compositional choices as such, if any are made it is merely for producing a form of contextual reference for the scene at hand.
Richard Wentworth's series, Making do and Getting By has a humbleness to it, it is a series where many small simple close ups are shown of objects out of their contextual use. There is a sense of 'botch jobs' to them but not poverty, the cup used to prop open the window, the boot as a door stop. Similar to much of Rut Blees' work we get a sense of playfulness about it, as we are so used to reading the items in these images in a completely different context, we take for granted that a cup is for drinking, or even more specific, a white ceramic cup is used for the drinking of tea or coffee, where one would take time and leisure to sit and enjoy the drink, the style of cup could even go so far as suggesting it was part of a set, and therefore we should see it in a scene where there is more than one person enjoying this drink. It however taken completely out of context and subverted, bizarrely into propping the window open for ventilation, not a brick or a even a tool that would typically be the temporary replacement, but a tea cup.
The same applies to the boot and the door, the boot is holding the door open, but we would expect to see someone wearing that boot using their foot to wedge the door open. As your mind comes with it's own perception, and preset values of contextual reference, you can almost construct character and narrative for this boot imaging that it chooses to hold the door open, it transcends being a soul less base object and gains this whimsical character to it.
Wentworth does the same with a whole assortment of items across London, like Rut Blees finding those moments when an ordinary location is seen for the spiritual character and life that resides there, or Vera Lutter capturing these whole experiences and motions, they all differ in methodology but they all strive to create not a construct as such, not a linear narrative, but to capture not that which our eyes would ordinarily see but what exists behind that.
Her use of water in this particular piece makes a perfect metaphor for what she creates with her work, this idea of the mirror world, the human world we have made but suspended in almost a form of spiritual limbo.Rut Blees talks a lot about the relations we have with water, particularly rivers. She references Friedrich Holderlin in an interview speaking about how the river is this ever moving entity that connects places and brings them to the sea, but through its reflection it also connects us to the sky, bringing these two separate elements together. Holderlin sees this relation close to a form of relation with God, and Rut Blees has taken this idea to joining her worlds with our worlds.
This series was all taken in Swansea, UK, though you would not be able to significantly identify it as a particular location from these images, Swansea is in actual fact the very opposite at a glance of this exciting wonderland styling in Rut Bless' images. Typical of many places in Britain it used to be an industrial area, mostly steel works, much of which was destroyed in World War II and then rebuilt without industry after, and so there is a sense of loss of life in the, all built with 50s style flat pack buildings and tower flats one could at glance view it as a depressing place almost.
It is still presented to us in a way it would not normally be viewed as it is given it's darted strip of light from the office lights and the grey lines of it's windows really cut through these strips. The tones however are still very grey, and it is quite a dark image.
She says that as her work continued she developed the motto, "To get out, go in deeper" and when we compare DVLA to Towering Inferno we can see this journey of discovering her parallel world and the motto of exploring deeper and closer apply through the series.
We get this idea of immersion and understanding through the work, as we see parts of Swansea, but not in the way you would typically expect, as we see the DVLA building, we see a block of flats, or a car park, but we don't see the locations, we see an understanding of the area, its almost a way of hinting about the people and life in the area, but in a much subtler way, almost in a spiritual way.
This idea of capturing not what you see as such, but more what you experience, or what you feel is a concept that drives many artists, particularly Vera Lutter, who began really as a sculptor and conceptual artist in Munich before moving to New York.
She works with the camera obscura, creating direct imprints on paper negatives.She rejected the idea of the lens, the negative and the print of standard photography, as she wanted to record her feelings and experience directly.
She explains it as beginning with her first apartment in New York and being fascinated by the lights, sounds and busyness of the streets, and she wanted to create a process of viewing it with her experience, as the apartment was central of her experience, she wanted to transform it into a container for this art piece, making her window where she watched the city her lens, the room she experienced it became the container and she replaced her body that felt the experience with the photographic paper.
This began her use of the camera obscura and the incredible exposure times she took these with.
Where Rut Blees uses the 5X4 format with exposures ranging around 10-15 minutes in order to visualise this spirit world, or the imprint life and experience leaves on a location, Vera Lutter takes her experience in raw form, using the giant paper negatives and skipping printing negatives into a straight, view point to viewer piece.
The majority of her work takes to looking at places of industrialisation, looking at the current and the old, the shifting changes between that which man uses to push for industrial fabrication and that which is abandoned until it takes a life of its own. From this idea of natural and man made progress and constructs she moved to another aspect of cities, which is the transportation side, how do these cultures and peoples that inhabit cities in such vast quantities get there? What of the product of their culture they bring with them? Which began her work looking at the constructs we make for this vast shift from place to place.
Again through out her work she utilises the camera obscura for this 'raw form image'. The direct transfer of experience.We can compare and relate the intentions of both Rut Blees and Vera Lutter in their journey of capturing not what we see but what we feel.
As experience and emotions are not tangible things, but the two struggle to record it, to convey it and show it without it losing it's meaning, are it is not something quite there as such but it is something recognisable.
The methodology of the two differs in camera choice and stylistic approach but they are two of the same type of artist in that, there are those that struggle to mould and shape what they see and control it to convey what they wish, and then there are those that will not alter, that will wait, observe and try to understand the meaning behind what they see, until they find a way of showing that hidden image behind the every day image. With both Vera Lutter and Rut Blees they do not alter their scene in any way, they keep it as they see with their eyes, but then find a way to show it to us as something else, the experience of the event and not the construct of the event.
We have a similar meaning to Richard Wentworth's work with the photograph. He is technically not a photographer, he is a sculptor, he describes his relationship to the camera as a tool for bringing small portable versions of the event after it has occurred. Unlike Vera Lutter of Rut Blees, he does not actively make any compositional choices as such, if any are made it is merely for producing a form of contextual reference for the scene at hand.
Richard Wentworth's series, Making do and Getting By has a humbleness to it, it is a series where many small simple close ups are shown of objects out of their contextual use. There is a sense of 'botch jobs' to them but not poverty, the cup used to prop open the window, the boot as a door stop. Similar to much of Rut Blees' work we get a sense of playfulness about it, as we are so used to reading the items in these images in a completely different context, we take for granted that a cup is for drinking, or even more specific, a white ceramic cup is used for the drinking of tea or coffee, where one would take time and leisure to sit and enjoy the drink, the style of cup could even go so far as suggesting it was part of a set, and therefore we should see it in a scene where there is more than one person enjoying this drink. It however taken completely out of context and subverted, bizarrely into propping the window open for ventilation, not a brick or a even a tool that would typically be the temporary replacement, but a tea cup.
The same applies to the boot and the door, the boot is holding the door open, but we would expect to see someone wearing that boot using their foot to wedge the door open. As your mind comes with it's own perception, and preset values of contextual reference, you can almost construct character and narrative for this boot imaging that it chooses to hold the door open, it transcends being a soul less base object and gains this whimsical character to it.
Wentworth does the same with a whole assortment of items across London, like Rut Blees finding those moments when an ordinary location is seen for the spiritual character and life that resides there, or Vera Lutter capturing these whole experiences and motions, they all differ in methodology but they all strive to create not a construct as such, not a linear narrative, but to capture not that which our eyes would ordinarily see but what exists behind that.
Monday, 21 November 2011
Pastiche
For my Pastiche I am using Brassai's "Paris After Dark No.27"
Brassai's visual style is very much in the Film Noir styling, utilising night time shots and the man made lighting in order to create this idea of mystery within the lights and shadows.
It is a shot of an alleyway in the dead of night, with a few neon signs and lights creating the lighting on the street, with two silhouetted blurred figures in the background.
It is a very mysterious shot, with the motion blur on the two silhouetted figures, presumably male from the shape of their overcoats and fedora hats, we get a scene of a crime maybe that has been committed? As we see these mysterious dark shapes fleeing this neon lit alleyway.
Find a street like this one will be quite difficult because there are not many streets like this at all in England, our alleyways are far thinner and our streets generally wider, with many many street lamps that would destroy the way the light falls in this shot.
This is my first attempt that I took digitally, on my Pentax K-x SLR camera with a 52mm lens.
When I do my film shoot I will pick a slightly wider angle lens to properly frame my street.
Choosing a different location is also very much a possibility, as I am glad with the way the shadows have fallen in the street, and I have replicated the tonal range and contrasts better than I expected particularly across the road. The road however is not the cobblestone road in Paris After Dark, and there are no signs like the neon Hotel sign that stands out so clearly in Brassai's.
There are also just too many street lamps, the road goes on too long and there are darted street lamps all along the road, particularly the one in the foreground, I tried to use it in replacement of the neon hotel sign, but it is simply too bright.
I returned to Rochester with a medium format Bronica in order to try and perfect my pastiche.
My first few shots where taken on the same road as my digital test, I did my best in framing to cut out cars and any other light sources, however after a few shots I found myself unsatisfied with my location, as it was far too bright and the road surface too plan. I chose to move on exploring alley ways in Rochester in the hopes of finding a better location which led me to a crooked alley in the high street.
Looking at the alleyway I found it perfect for my Pastiche as it had a cobblestone paving, with merely a few scant sources of light, the main of which being an old victorian style lamp. I found this location mimicked Brassai's 'Paris After Dark' quite effectively in framing, light sources and also in architecture, as it quite an enclosed alleyway, there is no real hint of a modern world in sight.
Brassai's visual style is very much in the Film Noir styling, utilising night time shots and the man made lighting in order to create this idea of mystery within the lights and shadows.It is a shot of an alleyway in the dead of night, with a few neon signs and lights creating the lighting on the street, with two silhouetted blurred figures in the background.
It is a very mysterious shot, with the motion blur on the two silhouetted figures, presumably male from the shape of their overcoats and fedora hats, we get a scene of a crime maybe that has been committed? As we see these mysterious dark shapes fleeing this neon lit alleyway.
Find a street like this one will be quite difficult because there are not many streets like this at all in England, our alleyways are far thinner and our streets generally wider, with many many street lamps that would destroy the way the light falls in this shot.
This is my first attempt that I took digitally, on my Pentax K-x SLR camera with a 52mm lens.
When I do my film shoot I will pick a slightly wider angle lens to properly frame my street.
Choosing a different location is also very much a possibility, as I am glad with the way the shadows have fallen in the street, and I have replicated the tonal range and contrasts better than I expected particularly across the road. The road however is not the cobblestone road in Paris After Dark, and there are no signs like the neon Hotel sign that stands out so clearly in Brassai's.
There are also just too many street lamps, the road goes on too long and there are darted street lamps all along the road, particularly the one in the foreground, I tried to use it in replacement of the neon hotel sign, but it is simply too bright.
I returned to Rochester with a medium format Bronica in order to try and perfect my pastiche.
My first few shots where taken on the same road as my digital test, I did my best in framing to cut out cars and any other light sources, however after a few shots I found myself unsatisfied with my location, as it was far too bright and the road surface too plan. I chose to move on exploring alley ways in Rochester in the hopes of finding a better location which led me to a crooked alley in the high street.
This shot was taken on 400ISO Ilford Black and White Film, on a Broncia SQ-B, with an Aperture of F9 and a 12sec Shutter Speed.
Looking at the alleyway I found it perfect for my Pastiche as it had a cobblestone paving, with merely a few scant sources of light, the main of which being an old victorian style lamp. I found this location mimicked Brassai's 'Paris After Dark' quite effectively in framing, light sources and also in architecture, as it quite an enclosed alleyway, there is no real hint of a modern world in sight.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Deconstructing Environment Photographers
As part of our environment unit on urban spaces, we have been given a deconstruction task to help us better understand city photography.
Our task is centralised around the Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building. A brief description of the building was given to us:
The Flatiron building, or Fuller Building, as it was originally called, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhatten, New York City and is considered to be a ground breaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902 it was one of the tallest buildings in the city and the only skyscraper north of 14th street. The building sits on a triangular island block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway and East 22nd Street, with 23rd street grazing the triangle's northern (uptown) peak.
As the French celebrated their Eiffel Tower, so did the Americans regard the Flatiron Building as the icon of a city being modernized and to be celebrated resulting in many different photographs of the building.
Our task is to look at six different photographs taken of the Flatiron building, by six different photographers, and to deconstruct them looking at similarities and dissimilarities in order for us to gain a better understanding of different methods of representation one can take on a single structure.
The first of these images is Edward Steichen's The Flatiron taken in 1905.
Edward Steichen was once considered one of the highest paid photographers in the world at the pinacle of his career, immigrating to the United States from Luxemburg in 1880, and took a lithography apprenticeship with The American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. Eventually he met Alfred Stieglitz, and became partners with him and helped him create his magazine, Camera Work, by designing the logo as he had a beginning in Fine Art.
His photograph the The Flatiron was taken two years after Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron. The two photographs bear many similarities in both framing and depth of field, as both have utilised trees as their foreground imagery, slightly obscuring the building behind, and the Flatiron itself is presented almost ghostly, looming over the city below. Steichen's approach falls in with his fine art background slightly when you look at how his tonal range and contrasts span across the image, along with his compositional approach, are reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts that had become rather fashionable at the turn of the century.
His use of the water, and the silhouettes of the carriages and men driving them, make the image incredibly haunting, we have a few suspended lights that appear to merely hover with no stand, and the sinister figure on the watery road shadowed by this ghostly monolith of the Flatiron building create a mise en scene reminiscent of a gothic horror novel.
This is where Steichen's image differs from the visual style of Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron, as they have a similar tonal range and certain choices in composition match up, but Steichen's image was very clearly taken at night and taken from an angle including the river, completely switches the mood to something far darker.
To the right we have Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron, taken as stated a few years before Steichen's, but bearing many similarities, the composition again is very reminiscent of a Japanese woodcut print, and uses similar techniques in perspective. Unlike Steichen however, who presents his Flatiron looming above all else in quite an intimidating manner, but Stieglitz however has chosen to angle his camera so the tree in the foreground matches the height of the Flatiron, in fact if you look at the tree reaching out of frame, it would even stand taller than the Flatiron. Therefore we see the two on a more equal plane to one another, especially as they both retain similar tones to one another, presented in a snowy scene of other trees in a park. As Stieglitz has taken a similar approach, from the Japanese woodcut prints, his angles and depth of field almost flatten the items presented, the tree in the foreground, the trees behind, and the Flatiron all appear at the same depth as one another.
The mood of this image is by no means as intimidating as Steichen's, but majestic in a way, as if man and nature are both presented equally in their triumphs.
Alvin Langdon Coburn was also part of this wave of photographers that followed a pictoral movement, where photographs followed the visual styling of paintings, and indeed created his own Flatiron in 1911. Indeed he was even a close colleague of Stieglitz as well, so we can see a clear grouping between the photographic choices of these three photographs and their time practicing.
Alvin Coburn's Flatiron does appear quite similar in its composition to Steichen's Flatiron when we look at the framing with the tree overhanging in the foreground silhouetted. Instead of the ominous road and carriages, however in the foreground like Steichen's Coburn has chosen a street scene that is quite busy and on an overcast day. In this case we see the Flatiron building in a more 'natural' state almost, as the other two photographs clearly present the building as something more abstract, be it the marvel amidst the trees like an old temple in Stieglitz's photo, or Steichen's dark gothic monolith. Coburn has however represented this building next to others smaller in stature, with a busy street of black suits and hats passing like traffic, so we see the building in its more 'natural' environment as it is more recognisable as the city in which this building is placed.
Going ahead in time, to the work of Walker Evans' Flatiron Building seen from below in 1928 we can see a completely different conceptual approach. In fact Walker Evans openly spoke opposed directly to Stieglitz and Steichen, stating "I thought Steichen was too commercial and Steiglitz too arty, playing around, photographing the beautiful and calling it 'God'".
Evans worked looking at detail, frontal portraits and straightforward depictions of American life, aspiring to create photographs that were "literate, authoritative, and transcendent".
He tried to capture the literal in sharp focus, through careful observation of his subject looking for the extraordinary. This generated a documentary style that would start to influence a new wave of American photography.
He sees the Flatiron from the perspective we would see the Flatiron, looking up at it from the street, he uses the lamp post on the left hand side in the foreground as a signifier of where this shot was taken, as we can just see the top and quite close in the foreground we the viewer can identify that this shot was taken from just below this lamp post at street level.
He also plays with the angles of other nearby buildings, we get a sense of a layered city, with tracks over the ground and buildings over the tracks, we gain a tremendous sense of height, but in a way most subtle unlike other photographers' Flatiron that utilise the full of the buildings height and drawing on how flat it is, looking at its angle from the side generally, like Walter Gropius' Flatiron, who coming from an architectural background, utilised a diagonal angle and as much of the buildings height as physically possibly to obviously show its height and width.
As Walter Gropius came from the school of Bauhaus, and working predominantly in architectural design, he has approached his Flatiron looking at it's sheer height above surrounding buildings, framing it just so that the building appeared as flat as possible. A viewer could almost feel a sense of vertigo with this piece, at a low angle he shows nothing but the Flatiron, and using the diagonal framing of corner to corner, he perfectly replicates the dizziness one could feel trying to gaze up at the entire building on the street.
It may have a completely different in composition to Walker Evans' Flatiron however he again follows this new emerging style of documentary, showing the building simply for what it is.
This styling is also apparent in Berenice Abbott's Flatiron taken in 1938.
Berenice Abbott took many photographs of New York, using as many contrasts as possible, using simply things like the way the light falls in a city filtering through buildings and overhead fire escapes onto the city below.
Berenice Abbott again adhering to the more documentary style of photography has chosen to photograph this at an angle more natural, of a person looking up on the building, she uses her contrasts to darken and emphasise this huge building against a perfectly clear sky, making sure that it is in detail down to the dark outline of each individual brick.
The buildings to the right being used as a tool again to show the scale of this building above the others, playing with the forward angle of the Flatiron against buildings facing horizontally, we get a tremendous sense of depth from the Flatiron, similarly to Gropius' diagonal technique we get a sense of vertigo from this photograph, like we must crane our necks to see it like a pedestrian on the street. These techniques are very similar in meaning to the composition of Walker Evans' Flatiron and we can see clear choices for the same reasoning, but Walker Evans has made a clear conscious effort to create his own version of the Flatiron that takes the earlier framing techniques of Steichen and Stieglitz, of utilising an overhanging object in the foreground and the other present elements around the Flatiron, (like Stieglitz's field or Steichen's lake) but using a more contemporary style, almost manipulated their stylistic approach and the elements of the Japanese woodcut paintings, but converting it into something more industrial and modern, documenting the building for what it is as a pose to manipulating it onto a pedestal.
Our task is centralised around the Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building. A brief description of the building was given to us:
The Flatiron building, or Fuller Building, as it was originally called, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhatten, New York City and is considered to be a ground breaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902 it was one of the tallest buildings in the city and the only skyscraper north of 14th street. The building sits on a triangular island block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway and East 22nd Street, with 23rd street grazing the triangle's northern (uptown) peak.
As the French celebrated their Eiffel Tower, so did the Americans regard the Flatiron Building as the icon of a city being modernized and to be celebrated resulting in many different photographs of the building.
Our task is to look at six different photographs taken of the Flatiron building, by six different photographers, and to deconstruct them looking at similarities and dissimilarities in order for us to gain a better understanding of different methods of representation one can take on a single structure.
The first of these images is Edward Steichen's The Flatiron taken in 1905.
Edward Steichen was once considered one of the highest paid photographers in the world at the pinacle of his career, immigrating to the United States from Luxemburg in 1880, and took a lithography apprenticeship with The American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. Eventually he met Alfred Stieglitz, and became partners with him and helped him create his magazine, Camera Work, by designing the logo as he had a beginning in Fine Art.
His photograph the The Flatiron was taken two years after Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron. The two photographs bear many similarities in both framing and depth of field, as both have utilised trees as their foreground imagery, slightly obscuring the building behind, and the Flatiron itself is presented almost ghostly, looming over the city below. Steichen's approach falls in with his fine art background slightly when you look at how his tonal range and contrasts span across the image, along with his compositional approach, are reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts that had become rather fashionable at the turn of the century.His use of the water, and the silhouettes of the carriages and men driving them, make the image incredibly haunting, we have a few suspended lights that appear to merely hover with no stand, and the sinister figure on the watery road shadowed by this ghostly monolith of the Flatiron building create a mise en scene reminiscent of a gothic horror novel.
This is where Steichen's image differs from the visual style of Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron, as they have a similar tonal range and certain choices in composition match up, but Steichen's image was very clearly taken at night and taken from an angle including the river, completely switches the mood to something far darker.
To the right we have Alfred Stieglitz's Flatiron, taken as stated a few years before Steichen's, but bearing many similarities, the composition again is very reminiscent of a Japanese woodcut print, and uses similar techniques in perspective. Unlike Steichen however, who presents his Flatiron looming above all else in quite an intimidating manner, but Stieglitz however has chosen to angle his camera so the tree in the foreground matches the height of the Flatiron, in fact if you look at the tree reaching out of frame, it would even stand taller than the Flatiron. Therefore we see the two on a more equal plane to one another, especially as they both retain similar tones to one another, presented in a snowy scene of other trees in a park. As Stieglitz has taken a similar approach, from the Japanese woodcut prints, his angles and depth of field almost flatten the items presented, the tree in the foreground, the trees behind, and the Flatiron all appear at the same depth as one another.
The mood of this image is by no means as intimidating as Steichen's, but majestic in a way, as if man and nature are both presented equally in their triumphs.
Alvin Langdon Coburn was also part of this wave of photographers that followed a pictoral movement, where photographs followed the visual styling of paintings, and indeed created his own Flatiron in 1911. Indeed he was even a close colleague of Stieglitz as well, so we can see a clear grouping between the photographic choices of these three photographs and their time practicing.Alvin Coburn's Flatiron does appear quite similar in its composition to Steichen's Flatiron when we look at the framing with the tree overhanging in the foreground silhouetted. Instead of the ominous road and carriages, however in the foreground like Steichen's Coburn has chosen a street scene that is quite busy and on an overcast day. In this case we see the Flatiron building in a more 'natural' state almost, as the other two photographs clearly present the building as something more abstract, be it the marvel amidst the trees like an old temple in Stieglitz's photo, or Steichen's dark gothic monolith. Coburn has however represented this building next to others smaller in stature, with a busy street of black suits and hats passing like traffic, so we see the building in its more 'natural' environment as it is more recognisable as the city in which this building is placed.
Going ahead in time, to the work of Walker Evans' Flatiron Building seen from below in 1928 we can see a completely different conceptual approach. In fact Walker Evans openly spoke opposed directly to Stieglitz and Steichen, stating "I thought Steichen was too commercial and Steiglitz too arty, playing around, photographing the beautiful and calling it 'God'".
Evans worked looking at detail, frontal portraits and straightforward depictions of American life, aspiring to create photographs that were "literate, authoritative, and transcendent".
He tried to capture the literal in sharp focus, through careful observation of his subject looking for the extraordinary. This generated a documentary style that would start to influence a new wave of American photography.
He sees the Flatiron from the perspective we would see the Flatiron, looking up at it from the street, he uses the lamp post on the left hand side in the foreground as a signifier of where this shot was taken, as we can just see the top and quite close in the foreground we the viewer can identify that this shot was taken from just below this lamp post at street level.
He also plays with the angles of other nearby buildings, we get a sense of a layered city, with tracks over the ground and buildings over the tracks, we gain a tremendous sense of height, but in a way most subtle unlike other photographers' Flatiron that utilise the full of the buildings height and drawing on how flat it is, looking at its angle from the side generally, like Walter Gropius' Flatiron, who coming from an architectural background, utilised a diagonal angle and as much of the buildings height as physically possibly to obviously show its height and width.As Walter Gropius came from the school of Bauhaus, and working predominantly in architectural design, he has approached his Flatiron looking at it's sheer height above surrounding buildings, framing it just so that the building appeared as flat as possible. A viewer could almost feel a sense of vertigo with this piece, at a low angle he shows nothing but the Flatiron, and using the diagonal framing of corner to corner, he perfectly replicates the dizziness one could feel trying to gaze up at the entire building on the street.
It may have a completely different in composition to Walker Evans' Flatiron however he again follows this new emerging style of documentary, showing the building simply for what it is.
Berenice Abbott took many photographs of New York, using as many contrasts as possible, using simply things like the way the light falls in a city filtering through buildings and overhead fire escapes onto the city below.
Berenice Abbott again adhering to the more documentary style of photography has chosen to photograph this at an angle more natural, of a person looking up on the building, she uses her contrasts to darken and emphasise this huge building against a perfectly clear sky, making sure that it is in detail down to the dark outline of each individual brick.
The buildings to the right being used as a tool again to show the scale of this building above the others, playing with the forward angle of the Flatiron against buildings facing horizontally, we get a tremendous sense of depth from the Flatiron, similarly to Gropius' diagonal technique we get a sense of vertigo from this photograph, like we must crane our necks to see it like a pedestrian on the street. These techniques are very similar in meaning to the composition of Walker Evans' Flatiron and we can see clear choices for the same reasoning, but Walker Evans has made a clear conscious effort to create his own version of the Flatiron that takes the earlier framing techniques of Steichen and Stieglitz, of utilising an overhanging object in the foreground and the other present elements around the Flatiron, (like Stieglitz's field or Steichen's lake) but using a more contemporary style, almost manipulated their stylistic approach and the elements of the Japanese woodcut paintings, but converting it into something more industrial and modern, documenting the building for what it is as a pose to manipulating it onto a pedestal.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Environment, The City
Initial Ideas
For this section of the environment unit, we are again required to pastiche one of three images, and then come up with three images of our own. For the conceptual approach for our own three image we have been directed to our own representation of the 'urban space'.
I have begun rather unclear as to what approach I would like to make for an 'urban space', but my starting point very much revolves around London and particularly, London at night. I have chosen this as my starting point as I have always had a fascination with large cities, for me London in particular as it was the one I visit most frequently. As my Father was born and raised in London, and my Grandparents still reside there, I visited London most frequently as a child, always fascinated buy the city, and the treasures it held, but not just the surface, material attractions. Despite how frequently I have been to London growing up, I never really went to the tourist attractions, as my Father was raised in central London those sites held no appeal to him, so we always explored different sections of the city when I visited my Grandparents, and as a I child I loved in particular to gaze out of the car window on the journeys home, at night, as it never seems to sleep.
This notion of childish wonder began my idea of exploring London, particularly at night, but the idea had no direction, just a vague visual style, but the work of Rut Blees and her series Luxemburg was briefly shown in a lecture and her visual style was incredibly striking to me.
She shot all of her Luxemburg series at night using very long exposures in order to draw on the ambient lighting only of all the different sections of the street, lamp posts, window lights etc.
She took the entire series in Swansea, yet they are barely recognisable as a representation of that specific place. She explored both the minute details in areas, and in other entire flat blocks, but her use of lighting and the colours she drew upon transform them into something else entirely, almost like a dreamlike version, or a parallel universe of the places she visited.
This visual style where the ordinary urban space becomes this beautiful, vivid and fairy tale world was an idea I found most appealing, as it followed my starting notion of the fairy tale, the fascination, but not in the rose tinted childish manner I began with, but a more solid idea of a parallel world we take for granted.
As much as this visual style has inspired me, and the message behind it however, I still find my idea merely a notion, an attempt at 'something pretty' and nothing more unless I could define my fascination, so I turned away from London, and looked at the other cities that fascinated me.
I have visited several other cities, and again felt fascinated by them, but I found myself thinking of fictional cities more and more, the most predominant ones that came to mind was:
For this section of the environment unit, we are again required to pastiche one of three images, and then come up with three images of our own. For the conceptual approach for our own three image we have been directed to our own representation of the 'urban space'.
I have begun rather unclear as to what approach I would like to make for an 'urban space', but my starting point very much revolves around London and particularly, London at night. I have chosen this as my starting point as I have always had a fascination with large cities, for me London in particular as it was the one I visit most frequently. As my Father was born and raised in London, and my Grandparents still reside there, I visited London most frequently as a child, always fascinated buy the city, and the treasures it held, but not just the surface, material attractions. Despite how frequently I have been to London growing up, I never really went to the tourist attractions, as my Father was raised in central London those sites held no appeal to him, so we always explored different sections of the city when I visited my Grandparents, and as a I child I loved in particular to gaze out of the car window on the journeys home, at night, as it never seems to sleep.
This notion of childish wonder began my idea of exploring London, particularly at night, but the idea had no direction, just a vague visual style, but the work of Rut Blees and her series Luxemburg was briefly shown in a lecture and her visual style was incredibly striking to me.
She shot all of her Luxemburg series at night using very long exposures in order to draw on the ambient lighting only of all the different sections of the street, lamp posts, window lights etc.
She took the entire series in Swansea, yet they are barely recognisable as a representation of that specific place. She explored both the minute details in areas, and in other entire flat blocks, but her use of lighting and the colours she drew upon transform them into something else entirely, almost like a dreamlike version, or a parallel universe of the places she visited.
This visual style where the ordinary urban space becomes this beautiful, vivid and fairy tale world was an idea I found most appealing, as it followed my starting notion of the fairy tale, the fascination, but not in the rose tinted childish manner I began with, but a more solid idea of a parallel world we take for granted.
As much as this visual style has inspired me, and the message behind it however, I still find my idea merely a notion, an attempt at 'something pretty' and nothing more unless I could define my fascination, so I turned away from London, and looked at the other cities that fascinated me.
I have visited several other cities, and again felt fascinated by them, but I found myself thinking of fictional cities more and more, the most predominant ones that came to mind was:
Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner
I am drawn to these fantasy cities, all of which depict a future city, they all fall into the Sci-Fi genre, but as I thought about these crazy, dense and future cities, I began to realise, that in today, these cities are very much in existence, there is no difference between them when you look at them from this distance, if you view them at night the cities atmosphere can appear alive with the bright and wondrous artificial lights coming from every possible direction, they are appear quite stunning, but they are all essentially the same, and that applies to our current cities as much as these Sci-Fi cities.
London
New York
Tokyo
Upon realising this I question even more what fascinates me about these cities, they all appear rather similar, they all have a 'magic' and atmosphere to them, particularly at night, but why? If they are all so similar surely one would get dismissive after a while of them?
I began thinking of the why, I loved these fictional cities, mainly because of the story set within them, and as I love the story I begin to love the city in which it is set, and gain almost a familiarity to this city through.
Thinking back to London I began sectioning off in my mind where I had been, what do I love most, and why?
I enjoy wondering around the typical places like Oxford street and Covent Garden, but I always found exlporing the alley ways filled with record shops in Soho far more fun and intriguing.
Andre Kertesz
Today (Wednesday 17/11/11) we where given a lecture on the 'The City' by our environment tutor Steffi Klenz, looking at photographer's and their different responses to the city, starting from the earliest of city photographers.
Many of these photographers had works quite intriguing but the first I will look into for my project is Andre Kertesz, a hungarian photographer, or to be more specific photojournalist, who fled hungary immigrating to Paris and then in 1936 to the United States out of fear of the growing Nazi persecution of Jews and early signs of WWII.
This photograph, Meudon, was taken in 1928 during Kertesz' time in France.
Kertesz was a particular type of photographer, as stated at the start of Daniele Sallenave's book on Kertesz, it states:
"An idea in vogue has it that the artist must necessarily be in opposition to his language, that he has to force it, constrain it, and twist its syntax in order to mould it to his own design. However, another definition of art is perhaps not only possible but more accurate- that the real artist is someone who has been able, through patient work or with immediate insight, to discover the profound nature of the language he has chosen and its laws, and to fully exploit its forms of expression, from the most obvious to the most hidden."
Kertesz was very much a product of this second type of artist, as with this photograph Meudon, the location intrigued him, and he knew he could see something there, it was a lower class and poverty ridden area of Paris. Kertesz came to that area and that location on many occasions and waited great lengths of time, until he understood it, until he saw what he was looking for, the right moment.
Much like Kertesz' other works such as his "New York" taken in 1947, he utilises the straight edges and angles of buildings to create this image of confusion or something unnatural. This confusion and oddity applies to much of his choices in framing and the way he tiers pieces at different perspectives, for instance the train and train track does not appear any further away in perspective than the buildings themselves, as he links the edges of the housing to the train track to subconsciously join the items together in the mind of the viewer.
The oddity also extends to the man in the foreground, as it is clearly a poverty ridden and depressed area, as we can tell from the dirty buildings, the destruction and rubble in the background, and the absence of life or 'hustle and bustle' reinforces that this area has nothing. yet contrasting there is this man in the foreground, in a full suit, well kept and a top hat, we ask, who is he? why is he here? he does not fit into frame as this story of the deprived lower class area suddenly has it's most prominent inhabitant a gentleman? contrasting again to what his attire signifies he is carrying some large form of package, we do not know what this is as it is wrapped, but it is large and cumbersome, and surely a man of wealth would not burden himself with this package? If he has purchased something large and expensive surely it would be delivered?
We cannot answer these questions, but they are clearly present, and that is the essence of this photograph, and Kurtesz' style, he captures the unusual, the complex. Life is a very varied experience, and with the amount of people that inhabit a city the life of the entire city will be incredibly varied and unusual on a day to day basis, and that is what makes Kurtesz so intriguing, he sees and captures these stories, in glimpses of complexities which is a language most adept to describing the nature of a city.
Developing Ideas
As I have searched for a clearer idea of what it is about the city I wish to capture, I have slowly come to the realisation that not a lot has changed. Looking at the work of Alfred Stieglitz in the 1930's, particularly his "Looking Northwest from the Shelton" , cities have not changed much at all for a long time, they are simply a bit denser and taller in areas, so much like I noticed there is not much difference between the cities of the past, present and future. They all contain tall buildings that alone may look staggering, but with as many of them as close together as they are, they lose all value and meaning, but then the presence of more skyscrapers means the presence of more people, does that mean we lose meaning in this too?
This is an area that would end up touching on post-modernism too much and the concept of this project would have to completely change, but then I thought, what of the people?
Going back to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and the street scenes I particularly love the cross culture element, or even "pan culture".There is the Japanese geisha advertised on the skyscraper, there are future versions of the London Punk, or the coined phrase "cyber-punks", you can see Hari Krishna wandering the streets, and if you watch a few documentaries about this film, you will discover that there is also an invented 'city speak' used in this film that is a mixture of German, Spanish, Japanese and a little Hungarian, which is a result of globalisation and the cross culture element ever present in a modern world all blending together.
This was an idea I would really like to explore, that 'pan culture' that is happening alongside these huge cities.
There have always been many different cultures within cities as a result of immigration, which is still a large issue being addressed in England at the moment which has been going on for quite some time, is it good or bad?
For my project though I want to stay clear of the politics and not look at immigration as such, but more out of globalisation, I want to capture that same mad form of cross culture we see in Blade Runner, where different elements of different cultures are all slammed together like it was common place, as though they where all one culture, some would argue that this means the cultures lose their individuality, but I personally see it as a form of acceptance, the culture doesn't change much, it just sits next to another almost, like in the movie still above, the punk walking alongside the Hari Krishna's like there is no difference between them.
In trying to find this unusual cross culture element, where the out of place becomes common place, I will be shooting in Camden Stables Market, London.
The reason I am choosing this location is that, albeit something of a tourist attraction, it is an area crammed with subcultures.
I want to specifically look at the Market Stables as it used to be a hospital for stable horses, and has overtime adapted into a market area, the stalls are all mismatched and darted down what would have been large ramp ways, arches or individuals stalls for horses, and any permanent market stalls have very much adapted their merchandise around their sections and not altered them, so there is a real sense of contrast between the new CD's of fashion on display on old Victorian walls. The cultural aspect intrigues me as well, as the market stalls are predominantly fashion based, but chain companies are not allowed to set up in the market area, which has resulted in a mismatch of your tourist "I love London T-Shirts" next to traditional Indian scarf's and furniture next to extreme Gothic clothing. The area has spurred much in the way of sub culture particularly with the "Gothic" or "Cyber-Punk" groups, overtime it has become quite a tourist attraction and some of the eccentricity and sub culture move away with this, but it still maintains this eccentricity in any new developments to the area and so it is a perfect location to capture this idea of a muddled cross culture.
I went to Camden first with my DSLR, to get a feel for the area and try for some digital test shots to find the best shots to portray my cultural mismatch I want to capture.
I tried finding areas where there where strange samples of different cultures, and styles that did not seem to fit, but yet where all placed together.
Contact Sheets
I returned to Camden on two occasions, shooting hand held on ISO400 Fuji Colour film, with a Bronica SQ-B.
In truth I had many problems with motion blur, as my film was simply not fast enough to shoot handheld in Camden Markets, however it was a compromise made to help my photography go fairly unnoticed as I was able to 'shoot from the hip' around the markets, generally not disturbing the crowd.
Much of my selection was a variation between which shots that where not subject to motion blur but also which ones that seemed to frame my idea of the mismatch culture the most.
My final three shots were the following:
Looking at my idea of the cultural mismatch of a city, and the random chaos that forms them, I picked locations where the where the most oddities in architecture around the market and food court areas. With the first frame it was the contrasts, and 'cut and paste' nature I loved about it, the old Victorian street clock next a set of traffic lights, the traffic lights also being mounted on an alley wall where there are no vehicles to require them. The old stable doors on the left that had become small shops for various clothing, but retaining the intricate designs on the big stable doors.
In the second frame, I chose this location for the chandelier above all else, again it is an alleyway market in Camden, I liked the general mismatch of products on display here, the typical tourist London T-shirts opposite an Egyptian art stall, all crammed in an underpass valley, and the chandelier being the most contrasting aspect, in all it's extravagance, illuminated what would otherwise be a dank looking underpass.
The third frame was a shot taken in one of the many food courtyards, with every type of food of the world displaying their neon signs next to one another. The focus I chose for this shot was of course the Indian themed seating area, that looks more like it belongs in an elaborate garden, yet it is smacked next to countless cheap fast food stalls.
In truth I would have liked my colours far more saturated and in a higher contrast to emphasise the idea of the cultural 'wonders' the city holds, but in terms of my film choice I had to go with a faster film to enable the handheld aspect of this photography.
Andre Kertesz
Today (Wednesday 17/11/11) we where given a lecture on the 'The City' by our environment tutor Steffi Klenz, looking at photographer's and their different responses to the city, starting from the earliest of city photographers.
Many of these photographers had works quite intriguing but the first I will look into for my project is Andre Kertesz, a hungarian photographer, or to be more specific photojournalist, who fled hungary immigrating to Paris and then in 1936 to the United States out of fear of the growing Nazi persecution of Jews and early signs of WWII.
This photograph, Meudon, was taken in 1928 during Kertesz' time in France.
Kertesz was a particular type of photographer, as stated at the start of Daniele Sallenave's book on Kertesz, it states:
"An idea in vogue has it that the artist must necessarily be in opposition to his language, that he has to force it, constrain it, and twist its syntax in order to mould it to his own design. However, another definition of art is perhaps not only possible but more accurate- that the real artist is someone who has been able, through patient work or with immediate insight, to discover the profound nature of the language he has chosen and its laws, and to fully exploit its forms of expression, from the most obvious to the most hidden."
Kertesz was very much a product of this second type of artist, as with this photograph Meudon, the location intrigued him, and he knew he could see something there, it was a lower class and poverty ridden area of Paris. Kertesz came to that area and that location on many occasions and waited great lengths of time, until he understood it, until he saw what he was looking for, the right moment.
Much like Kertesz' other works such as his "New York" taken in 1947, he utilises the straight edges and angles of buildings to create this image of confusion or something unnatural. This confusion and oddity applies to much of his choices in framing and the way he tiers pieces at different perspectives, for instance the train and train track does not appear any further away in perspective than the buildings themselves, as he links the edges of the housing to the train track to subconsciously join the items together in the mind of the viewer.
The oddity also extends to the man in the foreground, as it is clearly a poverty ridden and depressed area, as we can tell from the dirty buildings, the destruction and rubble in the background, and the absence of life or 'hustle and bustle' reinforces that this area has nothing. yet contrasting there is this man in the foreground, in a full suit, well kept and a top hat, we ask, who is he? why is he here? he does not fit into frame as this story of the deprived lower class area suddenly has it's most prominent inhabitant a gentleman? contrasting again to what his attire signifies he is carrying some large form of package, we do not know what this is as it is wrapped, but it is large and cumbersome, and surely a man of wealth would not burden himself with this package? If he has purchased something large and expensive surely it would be delivered?
We cannot answer these questions, but they are clearly present, and that is the essence of this photograph, and Kurtesz' style, he captures the unusual, the complex. Life is a very varied experience, and with the amount of people that inhabit a city the life of the entire city will be incredibly varied and unusual on a day to day basis, and that is what makes Kurtesz so intriguing, he sees and captures these stories, in glimpses of complexities which is a language most adept to describing the nature of a city.
Developing Ideas
This is an area that would end up touching on post-modernism too much and the concept of this project would have to completely change, but then I thought, what of the people?
Going back to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and the street scenes I particularly love the cross culture element, or even "pan culture".There is the Japanese geisha advertised on the skyscraper, there are future versions of the London Punk, or the coined phrase "cyber-punks", you can see Hari Krishna wandering the streets, and if you watch a few documentaries about this film, you will discover that there is also an invented 'city speak' used in this film that is a mixture of German, Spanish, Japanese and a little Hungarian, which is a result of globalisation and the cross culture element ever present in a modern world all blending together.
This was an idea I would really like to explore, that 'pan culture' that is happening alongside these huge cities.There have always been many different cultures within cities as a result of immigration, which is still a large issue being addressed in England at the moment which has been going on for quite some time, is it good or bad?
For my project though I want to stay clear of the politics and not look at immigration as such, but more out of globalisation, I want to capture that same mad form of cross culture we see in Blade Runner, where different elements of different cultures are all slammed together like it was common place, as though they where all one culture, some would argue that this means the cultures lose their individuality, but I personally see it as a form of acceptance, the culture doesn't change much, it just sits next to another almost, like in the movie still above, the punk walking alongside the Hari Krishna's like there is no difference between them.
In trying to find this unusual cross culture element, where the out of place becomes common place, I will be shooting in Camden Stables Market, London.
The reason I am choosing this location is that, albeit something of a tourist attraction, it is an area crammed with subcultures.
I want to specifically look at the Market Stables as it used to be a hospital for stable horses, and has overtime adapted into a market area, the stalls are all mismatched and darted down what would have been large ramp ways, arches or individuals stalls for horses, and any permanent market stalls have very much adapted their merchandise around their sections and not altered them, so there is a real sense of contrast between the new CD's of fashion on display on old Victorian walls. The cultural aspect intrigues me as well, as the market stalls are predominantly fashion based, but chain companies are not allowed to set up in the market area, which has resulted in a mismatch of your tourist "I love London T-Shirts" next to traditional Indian scarf's and furniture next to extreme Gothic clothing. The area has spurred much in the way of sub culture particularly with the "Gothic" or "Cyber-Punk" groups, overtime it has become quite a tourist attraction and some of the eccentricity and sub culture move away with this, but it still maintains this eccentricity in any new developments to the area and so it is a perfect location to capture this idea of a muddled cross culture.
I went to Camden first with my DSLR, to get a feel for the area and try for some digital test shots to find the best shots to portray my cultural mismatch I want to capture.
I tried finding areas where there where strange samples of different cultures, and styles that did not seem to fit, but yet where all placed together.
Contact Sheets
I returned to Camden on two occasions, shooting hand held on ISO400 Fuji Colour film, with a Bronica SQ-B.
Much of my selection was a variation between which shots that where not subject to motion blur but also which ones that seemed to frame my idea of the mismatch culture the most.
My final three shots were the following:
In the second frame, I chose this location for the chandelier above all else, again it is an alleyway market in Camden, I liked the general mismatch of products on display here, the typical tourist London T-shirts opposite an Egyptian art stall, all crammed in an underpass valley, and the chandelier being the most contrasting aspect, in all it's extravagance, illuminated what would otherwise be a dank looking underpass.
The third frame was a shot taken in one of the many food courtyards, with every type of food of the world displaying their neon signs next to one another. The focus I chose for this shot was of course the Indian themed seating area, that looks more like it belongs in an elaborate garden, yet it is smacked next to countless cheap fast food stalls.
In truth I would have liked my colours far more saturated and in a higher contrast to emphasise the idea of the cultural 'wonders' the city holds, but in terms of my film choice I had to go with a faster film to enable the handheld aspect of this photography.
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